


we violent ones remain a little longer

by fais_do_do



Category: Prospect (2018)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ezra is intelligent, Family Feels, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Philosophy, Rainer Maria Rilke - Freeform, Serious Injuries, Space capitalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:42:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 68,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28372596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fais_do_do/pseuds/fais_do_do
Summary: Cee gets to know a dying man.Ezra gets to know an orphan.Or, after the launch, they learn each other.
Relationships: Cee & Ezra (Prospect 2018)
Comments: 156
Kudos: 144





	1. PART I

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know if anyone will read this, as I believe I missed the Prospect train (I bought a ticket, but when did the train even roll in?), but damn, did I enjoy writing it. It’s been years since I’ve enjoyed writing, so, thanks Prospect (2018), film that no one seems to have seen, save for we few, appreciative bastards.

The sick would take to Ezra like anything worth taking. Fast and greedy, hungry. But, before that, they had some time.

* * *

They had managed to catch the orbiting Towline, docking with ease. Cee knew the procedure easy enough. A few quick and stale words, and they were locked in.

There wasn’t much in the way of medical assistance on the BG-Pivot Towline. It wasn’t in that business, had no interest in it. If a corpse could pay it’s own way in pod-dues, the Towline would make sure it was the most well-traveled dead thing in all the Black.

They made the request to detach at Central, or, so Ezra had stated between hitched breaths, any planet or station of good and decent means.

A chrono-marker popped up on their console depicting their ETA: 10-standard-cycles.

It didn’t even say _where_ they were being taken. It didn’t matter, really. As long as their requirements were fulfilled: _any planet or station of good and decent means._

All that was left was to wait and practice their being patient.

* * *

Juice and foam were impressive creations.

Juice cleansed from within. It was a popular and well-used – sometimes over-used as evidenced by the psychological ramifications of too much time spent relying on its potent mix: healing at best, mind-bending and strange at worst. It did its work quickly; your lung passages opened, letting pure air back in. It cleansed the rot and fever as it went deeper.

Too much and it would accumulate in the brain.

Would make you _see_.

And foam.

Foam, though lacking any creativity in its name, was an elegant thing. When applied new and correct, it could hold a being’s vessels, large or small, together for five whole cycles. Sometimes more when done by a strong and sure hand.

Ezra once knew a man who had severed his abdominal aorta and, with the application of foam, lived four agonizing days before passing. He hadn’t a hope in the Black but they had applied it all the same.

The foam was certainly doing the same for him. Holding him together, keeping whatever was bleeding in his gut and chest wall from doing so. The initial pain and burn did indeed subside, as it always did after the initial application, but what was left was still raw and aching.

With time, the built-in pain management aspect gets processed by the kidneys and liver, and the pain comes back. _But_ , for the first cycle or two he would only feel his injury in a vague way.

He could feel the blood-loss via his weakness, but it did not hurt. He was exhausted but it did not hurt. He would fall asleep unbidden, and awake in a feverish sweat, but it did not hurt.

Cee had looked at him as though he were dying, brow knit and worried, but it did not hurt.

He had told her that, at some point. He’d said, _don’t worry, little bird, don’t feel a thing_ , but she hadn’t looked any less worried or convinced of a good outcome. He’d said the same of the amputation, and it had, indeed, hurt.

Maybe.

But then, at the same moment in which the light of Canopus’ rays came through the shuttle window during another worrying, unremembered nap, pain sluiced it’s way back into his awareness.

“Oh, shit.” He muttered, more to himself than to Cee or the Black before him. Perhaps a bit to Canopus’ unyielding might; it was particularly bright at this orientation.

“What? What’s wrong?” She was worried; it was plain in her voice. For a girl of little intentional affect, she was easy to read.

“Nothing. Nothing is wrong.” He said, tight and clipped, even as he grimaced against the now piercing pain in his upper abdomen.

In the past, when he’d used the foam, he’d gotten himself quick and safe to decent medical attention. And, when he hadn’t, the wound had been minded properly, hadn’t turned pink and angry. His former partner, though lacking in decent dialogue, had been quite good at the medical side of things.

“You’re lying.” She accused, boldly. She was quick to get to know a body. She’d seen him in pain before, had catalogued it, and knew it. Didn’t mean she knew how to feel about it, that much was clear; it was written in her face, an expression made half of worry and half of suspicion. She looked just as liable to help as to run.

“I think I am.” The pain _was_ building and he reckoned he could do with another syrette. He said as much.

“I didn’t see a kit.” Cee said, her voice as steady as ever. If Ezra hadn’t spent the past few cycles with her, he’d have read her as disinterested in his dilemma. He knew better.

“Did you give it a thorough lookin’?” It wasn’t an accusation but something twitched in her expression, reacting as though it may have been. She turned away, out of his line of sight.

He didn’t have the energy to turn to watch.

He stared ahead, hand on his abdomen, and tried not to let the soft thumps of tossed supplies aggravate his headache. He felt raw, like every nerve was exposed.

“Oh. Found one.” Her voice wasn’t too far off and, given the space, she couldn’t have put much distance between them, but it still took her a moment to return.

“There’s not much in it.” _Ah_ , he thought. She had probably spent a small private moment agonizing over the immense inadequacy of the kit.

A single foam-injector. A half-filled bottle of anti-microbe. A single dose of anti-fever. Two stimulants in a blister pack of twenty. Two syrettes. A couple of fluid packs and salts.

No bandages. No fillers. No vasculizers or pressors. No nerve blockers. No systemic anticoags.

He remembered the man in the Green; he’d also been missing an arm and had been far more cared for than he. Had been steadier on his feet. Ezra imagined that was where the supplies had gone.

He could only hope this would carry him to wherever they detached. For now, the syrettes were all he had eyes for. The rest could wait for when things got troubling. More-so than they already were.

He picked out the syrette and motioned for Cee to remove the kit from his lap; there was only so much he could do weak and single handed.

“If you don’t mind –“ He nodded towards the shirt he could not lift up while holding a syrette. Syrette’s were best injected by the hand of the sufferer. Another being could not tell precisely the location of one’s ills or pains, even if it were as obvious as a gaping stab wound.

Cee lifted up his shirt; she did not grimace, but her eyes shot towards his own. The foam was intact. It hadn’t degraded as it had in the Green, but the edges of the wound were reddened and bothered. Eventually he would have to remove the foam. Would likely, eventually, have to excise whatever rot made it in with the blade.

He held the syrette closer and swallowed, his throat suddenly dry and pained.

His careful planning and cataloguing almost made him forget how horribly painful injecting a syrette into his abdomen would be.

“Will that hurt?” She asked him, just as she had before she had hacked his arm off. She knew it would. And Ezra, he was a man of decent judgment. He knew her to be asking something deeper.

“I’ll be just fine.” He answered, covering all possible matters of concern.

He felt her hand sneak on to his right shoulder, squeezing, hand bunching the fabric of his ruined shirt.

Ezra thought he would have liked to know Damon better, if only to understand Cee.

* * *

It _had_ hurt. She could tell.

Similarly, he _wasn’t_ fine.

She looked over at the man. His chest was heaving as he soundlessly – nearly, the odd grunt and hiss echoed through the small space - bore the temporary pain of the syrette.

It looked like terrible work and she hoped she’d never have to do that to herself.

He’d pushed the small injector into his abdomen, right above the foam. His muscles had quivered and he had jerked in a way that had looked unintentional, but he’d held it there, had made sure it all went in.

Eventually his breathing evened out.

The syrette was doing it’s work.

“That’s good. Better than the first.” He said to himself. He talked even when no one was listening. Talked just to say words.

She was so used to her father, to Damon, snoring in between commentary. Used to him snapping at any odd time, excusing himself via headaches and claims of fatigue, telling her to _quiet down_. She was so used to him telling her to just _focus._

 _And,_ Ezra was the first being to echo her own deepest thoughts regarding the matter: _on what?_

Though, he hadn’t asked it how she had wanted to. She had wanted to ask it while screaming into the Black. She had wanted to demand to be made to understand what she was missing and whether her mother would approve this life.

 _On what?_ No job had ever led to a satisfying end. Not for her. They never had anything more than a pod and terrible, mass-produced meals. She didn’t understand.

He had asked it softly and with genuine curiosity. He had asked as though he knew that, perhaps, she did have an answer that would inspire one to understand. That she may say something to which he would nod knowingly at the wisdom.

Instead, she had launched without provocation into criticism of her father and then, herself. A criticism she still, to some extent, felt to be true.

She felt the sudden urge to be more useful. Without saying anything to her companion she stood and made her way to the small galley. She would catalogue what was left, _if_ there was anything left.

She pulled on ungreased, hinged doors, and slid half-broken panels open; she wasn’t disappointed. There was more in the way of nutrition than her father had ever kept them stocked with. It shouldn’t have surprised her – by her count there had been at least four mercenaries, and one prisoner, though she doubted they had _fed_ him.

Perhaps what surprised her was their _luck._

A sound. Her hands stayed over the ration packs she had just begun sorting. He had moved, had followed her into the galley.

He had seated himself in one of the travel seats and was bent at the waist, left hand on his knee. His eyes were closed, and he was breathing with slow intention; he looked as though he were trying to steady himself or engage in one of those thought-arresting practices she heard mentioned on some errant radio-cast on managing life in the Black.

An uneasiness passed through her. He was awake and alive. Breathing. Yet, he looked terrible. Pale. Bruised and beat up. His hair looked damp, sticking up in some places by a feverish cowlick. The rest stuck to his scalp, at his hairline. The splash of blonde at his right temple was nearly translucent with perspiration.

She felt sick, too, in that moment.

“Hey.” He opened his eyes looking only slightly put off by being summoned like some lap-animal.

“We have to focus on keeping you stable.” She said, suddenly, though he hadn’t asked, hadn’t even been talking.

For a moment the man said nothing.

“You can call me Ezra, you know.”

 _No_ , she thought, _I’m not doing that._

“That’s weird.” She said, wrinkling her nose. It _was_ weird, she just didn’t know _why._

“It’s my name.” He said voice lilting in clear amusement.

“That’s … not what I meant.” She still didn’t _know_ what she meant. She didn’t know why she felt anything over it.

“Well, you _can_ call me that. When you want.” His expression looked to be made of something a little too mischievous, like he was teasing her.

“Okay.”

“And, don’t you worry yourself, little bird.” She snorted as he spoke; she had told _him_ that he could call _her_ by her name, too. He was doing that on _purpose._ “That’s my problem for now.”

Ezra said it as he straightened his posture, looking significantly less pained. He gave her a tight smile that still somehow reached his eyes.

“No,” she said sternly, her gaze boring into him and she fiddled with the packs in her hands, “it’s _our_ problem.”

* * *

The syrette, a stimulant pastille, and a dose of salts revived Ezra enough to allow him to make his own wanderings around the tight space they called their salvation. He knew it to be a false revival, could feel it in the way his heart skipped beats, palpatory and uncomfortable. In the way he flushed with heat at odd moments, unbidden by movement, rest, or any identifiable thing. The way he sometimes shook for no reason.

But, he wasn’t one to deny such gifts in the Black. He felt well enough to be on his feet, for the moment, and that was good.

The shuttle was indeed small. And it _had_ been stripped. They had not been lying about that, the mercenaries. It wasn’t as though Cee and himself, injured as he was, and time-crunched as they both were, could have taken the time to catalogue what items of meaning were missing and should be added back.

Coolant coils mostly stripped. It would get hot, at times, depending on how the Towline set her course. No water reservoir, as promised; enough hydration salts to keep them from dying but nothing to cleanse with. No hydrogen-4; no backup plan if they dropped too hard.

Ezra tried the visualizer. Nothing came up. Not a single transmission; not even the external cams.

“Not much in the ways of entertainment.” He said to Cee. She didn’t respond; she was again worrying her delicate hands over the field kit, storing things in their appointed places. _A child of immense poise_ , he thought, as she checked the expiration cycles.

He opened the very small door to the even smaller refresher cabin; a vacc-tube, a cistern that was undoubtedly unconnected to any water source, a mirror. The last one caught his eye; he tried to imagine any one of those mercenaries gazing vain into its reflective material.

He caught a brief glimpse of himself. He didn’t need to stare to recognize how poorly he looked. How drawn and tired. It didn’t much interest him; how he felt and looked at this time were one and the same.

He circled back to the primary console, as opposed to the launch console; Cee still occupied that one. He could hear the click of the kit’s casing, the scrape of its careful stowage.

Large chunks of equipment had been removed; it was hard to say what, exactly. He flicked a few switches, with little response. A light flickered here and there. Pieces of the shuttle groaned externally, out there in the Black – the landing gear, the solar feeder orientation gear.

He hit a comm-button, meant for internal dialogue, and the craft boomed with sudden musical intrusion. It was _that_ song. Cee turned in distress, hands shooting upwards to cover her ears. She glared at him even though he was quick with the button, silence returning.

“I am starting to think,” He shouted over the ringing in his ears; he could do without that song for the rest of whatever life he had left, “that it wasn’t the Green that turned those poor bastards’ minds to rot.

Cee smiled and so did Ezra. It looked good on her; it made her look as young as she was, happier than she was.

“That one is off limits.” He said, the ringing fading into a residual annoyance.

* * *

They learn each other.

It becomes an unspoken game. Who can learn the thing most strange about the other? Who can pull at the longest thread?

* * *

Ezra, she realized, was a smart man.

Or, as her father – deceased, but awfully loud - would have assessed: a conniving man.

They would have been in disagreement, she knew, had they the chance to discuss it. She had read too much, and he had taken too much – _be careful_ , a dealer had once said, _it will make you paranoid_ \- for them to come to the same conclusion.

Ezra’s manner reminded her of characters in her book. In Streamer Girl. A smart character with too big a vocabulary for her to replicate in her own writings. A character whose motivations weren’t all that clear or came from a place she had not yet experienced.

But, none of the characters matched him _perfectly_. None were so gritty. None shot a thrower or prospected.

She had tried to find a living analogue for Ezra but, despite her recollective exploration, she had failed. He was a new type of being to her. He spoke beyond what she wanted to hear, listened beyond what she expected. He had opinions on all things, even unfamiliar ones.

It wasn’t long before she was reminded of his unusual knowledge; they were taking a small respite. The cataloguing of their goods and moving it here and there had tired Ezra more than he would have liked to admit, though admit he did.

 _It would seem I have worn myself out_ , he had said with a chuckle, as though it were funny.

So, they had resumed taken up station at the control panel. It was the only vaguely comfortably space besides the sleeping quarters, which, too, were inadequate – a mere add on, bare-boned like the rest of the craft, and filled only by para-steel bunks and old cloths.

Neither felt like sparing the energy to dig through the rotted belongings of the now deceased mercenaries.

“See, there?” He had said it so suddenly, so out of nowhere, that she had flinched, just a bit. She’d been staring at the Tower, basking in the last vestiges of self-satisfaction over their success.

“What?” Cee leaned forward, curious, worried.

“That little bit of blue.” She squinted, tried to follow where his finger was pointing. It was hard, given their different perspectives and the fact that his only arm was too far from her to really trace a line of sight.

“Mmm.” She hummed. Maybe she saw it. She couldn’t be sure. She didn’t always notice what stars, planets, moons or whatever else were colored what. At a glance they all looked the same.

“It’s small, but it carries more meaning than one could ever know.”

She squinted again. Maybe she could see it, the small, very small blue thing out there in the black. It glowed just enough to be seen, but only if the viewer put intention towards it.

“What is it?” She asked; her father had never said anything about a little blue thing off in the Black.

“Where we came from.”

She turned to look at him, uncertain.

He already knew they were Floaters. He’d said as much when he’d met her father, had pegged him just by looking into his eyes, by listening to the way he spoke.

“I’m from Nowhere.”

“No. Where we came from. Humans. An ancient thing, the blue dot out there in the black.”

“What?” She felt genuinely discomfited. No one had told her such a thing. He was probably lying, had to be. Her father had never mentioned some ancient story about where human’s came from. They came from the stars. “No, that’s not true.”

“Many would say it is. It’s dead now. Toxic like the Green but with nothing but liquid all around.”

She looked again. It was shifting as the Towline altered course. She didn’t understand how he could believe such a thing, that they had come from a toxic, liquid planet.

But Ezra was smart.

She remembered him telling her things back in the Green, the way he navigated the doomed encounter with the villagers in the Green, the way he managed to bargain with armed mercenaries.

She supposed she had to believe him. The acceptance of the concept left her in small awe.

“How do you know that?”

He shrugged, eyes redirecting to her own. The Towline moved, rotated, and the little blue dot was gone forever.

“It behooves one to know such things. Separates you from those that don’t know such things.” He shrugged, on armed. “Might be useful, one day.”

She had never been told anything like that.

She hadn’t realized a story could be valuable, just on its own.

* * *

Cee liked music.

Not _that_ music. That button stayed off.

She liked listening to _her_ music and producing lyrical sounds of her own.

She hummed to herself, sometimes. Some alien song that he may or may not know. She was a bit pitchy, at times, but he was no song-siren himself; he wasn’t about to join her or school her.

It added a certain ambiance long disappeared from his own life. His former partner had been an immensely quiet being. His former partner rarely removed his mask, his suit, and it would be with hesitation that Ezra would describe him.

His prospecting partner – not human – had been part of some terrible war and had come out the other end disturbed, deadly.

Ezra couldn’t help but wonder how he’d done it; how he’d born the silence. No, actually, he knew. He’d talked. He’d talked about all manner of things. He talked until his partner shoved him, roughly, the message clear: _quiet or I’ll gut you, small thing._

One thing he never really did, though, was sing.

He’d never really thought about it.

She was humming now as she picked through the not-theirs-possessions in the sleeping quarters. Ezra thought it sounded like something chaotic and disorganized but, coming from her, it was surely a good thing. She seemed more her age.

She hadn’t spared him a single glance the entire time they’d been up there. He figured that to be a healthy thing. The motion of the turning rock hopper and the duty of cataloguing yet more material had pulled her into a healthy rhythm.

Ezra himself was lying on his back, having claimed one of the bunks. It wasn’t perfectly comfortable, but he wasn’t about to engage in no begging and choosing. He was content to let Cee hum away, stopping only occasionally to huff in disgust over a rotted item, or to muffle a surprised sound over a unique find.

The song seemed to go on for time immemorial and he began to wonder if she weren’t just making something up as she went.

“What is that you’re humming?” He finally asked, if only to soothe his curiosities and quell a coming headache that had nothing to do with her.

She turned to him, almost as though surprised to find him there; still, her face lit up as it had so briefly in the Green.

“You’ve never heard it?” She said very seriously, tone soft but surprised, just as it had been when speaking of _Streamer Girl._

“Can’t say I have.” Not her rendition, at least, though he doubted he knew the original.

“It’s Kamrean. It’s called _In a Storm._ It’s one of my favorites. You really don’t know it.” She appeared to be personally offended, the seriousness of her passion lost on him.

“I really don’t. You’ll have to play it on the comm sometime, if we ever manage to fix it.” He doubted they’d ever be able to fix it. That thing played _one thing_ and _one thing only_. He wondered if that had been used to drive their prisoner mad for he could think of no other purpose for such a programming endeavor.

Still, had they been able to, he would have liked to hear it.

“Yeah.” She nodded, agreeing. Then, something he hadn’t been expecting. “I went there once, when I was a baby.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t remember it.”

“You should go again.” He’d never been to Kamrea either, but he imagined she’d want to.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

She shuffled away from him, turning her attention back to what she’d been doing. A very old, very tattered magazine in an unreadable language caught her eye.

She started humming again.

* * *

Ezra liked sweet things.

He said as much when given the choice between a golan-ju-berry nutrition bar and a moc-cucão protein square.

Cee had tossed them on the small, bare table between them. It was a standing table, meant to save space, but it was by no means convenient for an exhausted, one-armed man.

“You choose.” She had said, wanting to make him feel better. Her father used to do the same for her, giving her the option when rations and spirits were low. It had meant something then, when she was younger.

“Well, to what do I owe such an honor?” He was teasing her, she knew. Or thought. She couldn’t imagine someone caring too much about a choice between two disappointing things, even when she herself had, once.

“You’re sick. You need to keep your strength. So, you choose.” She felt terribly adult, in that moment, though that wasn’t how she would have verbalized it. It was more the small, foundling sensation of breaking the orbit of adolescence, a hand reaching towards adult ideals.

He gave her a small smile, a thing that just tugged at the corner of his mouth. His eyes warmed and he glanced down at the offerings.

“If the cook insists.” She saw his right shoulder twitch, just for a moment; an aborted attempt to use something that wasn’t. His left hand reached out and turned the moc-cucão packet over, eyes taking in the contents, the tagline. It promised a _sweet, fulfilling journey to the Opal Moon._

She didn’t know the Opal Moon, but maybe Ezra did.

“A sweet, fulfilling journey to the Opal Moon. I’m not sure it would be wise to say no to such a promise, given present circumstances and not having had the opportunity to visit myself.”

Cee rolled her eyes. She hadn’t known him long, but the unnecessary lyricism of his speech was already so familiar and expected.

“Besides,” he started as he attempted, one-handed, to open the packet, “I’ve always been fond of sweet things.”

The admission made her pause. It felt so different in comparison to what had preceded it, but still felt uniquely Ezra. Vast, unnecessary elocutions followed by genuine, personal exclamations.

It reminded her of the way he would explain things to her, in too many words, following it all up with a small, _thank you_.

He still struggled with the packet. They were tightly sealed, meant to withstand the pressures of life in the Black. He was about to bring it to his mouth, bite it open, make a real mess.

She snatched it from him, opening it with careful ease. She handed it back and he took it with no shame, only gratitude for a job made easier.

“Why, thank you.” Ezra said as she took the gojan-ju bar, ripped it open, held it to her lips.

“Cheers.” He said as he took a large bite of his own, eyes closing as he concentrated on chewing.

Cee wanted to roll her eyes, but instead responded in kind, voice muffled and mouth full.

* * *

Cee had nightmares.

Ezra suspected that all beings whom spent too much time in the Black – and any time at all in the Green – were doomed to nightmares, but it seemed a particularly unfair and frightful thing for a girl of her age.

He hadn’t been sleeping himself, so bothered was he by the heat. They’d taken a smooth path past a radiant dwarf and without the cooling coils at full capacity, he could feel the heat. That along with the budding fever, unquelled by the single pastille of anti-fever taken late in the cycle, left him slick with sweat.

It pooled under his back as he gazed into the Black. It radiated from his abdomen and made him feel unwell. He had gotten up to find something cool to place behind his neck, or on his brow, whichever would accommodate, when he heard it.

A childish yelp from a heap of sullied and unclean cloth.

He needn’t wait long or be patient; she cried out again, softly. She was weeping.

He called out into the dark. There was no true and proper dark, not with their continuous rotations around the main attachment of the Towline, but it felt appropriate to call it that. The dark was from whence nightmares tended to hail, where they made their home.

He called out softly.

“Hey.” Simple and short. Hopefully enough to rouse her. He didn’t want to startle her and hoped her dreams had kept her close enough to the surface that that would be enough.

He hadn’t much experience in the ways of comforting crying children, let alone ones as sharp and intelligent as Cee. She was, in many ways, adult-like. He knew she would feel at fault to be discovered in such a state.

A brief hesitance overcame him, but he did not yield to it.

“Hey, little bird.” He tried again, hoping the nickname he had assigned to her – without her consent; she still bristled at times, still rolled her eyes, still looked at him wondering from where he’d pulled it – would have some effect.

She twitched. Not in recognition but in continued discomfort over unseen troubles.

She didn’t say anything. Or, at least by his ear there was nothing to interpret as words. There were no clues to what ailed her or kept her from deep rest. He reckoned it could be as many things as it wasn’t. It could be something mundane and childish, or something born of a deep crisis of spirit.

Bottom line was, he had no clue.

“Cee.” He tried, placing his remaining hand on her shoulder.

Like a brand-new bracing coil, she sprung up and shied away, ready to leap far away and out of sight.

“What. What’s wrong?” Her eyes shone in the pit of a transient shadow. The sleeping quarters were darker than any other part of the vessel, but light still shone in and gave its occupants an unusual glow and what sometimes appeared to be a beast-like eye-shine.

He waited a beat. She appeared as one who hadn’t been aware of their own suffering. He saw no reason nor kindness in telling her.

“Nothing. Nothing is wrong.” He said, despite the heat-sweat beading slowly down his back, the sides of his face. The lines of his chest and belly.

Silence.

“We’re passing Canopus. It’s a sight for those who’ve never laid eyes.” He leaned away from her, head angling towards the observation window as though it held something unique and divine.

“You’re crazy.” She said, groaning, pushing herself deeper into those ragged sleeping cloths. Still, even as she settled, she stayed on her back gazing out the window, eyes searching for the star.

“I take offense to that.” Which he didn’t, but, in the dark, she laughed.

* * *

**ETA: Seven-standard-cycles.**

Cee checked the chronometer. It wasn’t faulty. It didn’t lie, but she felt as though more time had passed. Maybe it was because time was stretching out it’s longest hands – just like in _Streamer Girl_ – as she was being forced to watch Ezra decline.

In _Streamer Girl_ time moved past a being, most beings, so that no being could do a thing about it. Time moved and you lived through whatever it presented to you, you let go of whatever it pulled from your grasp as it continued onward with it’s own agenda.

Though, sometimes it was the being that moved. The titular character could do that. Move outside of time, outside of the stream. She could make the time stream stretch to preserve a moment, or shorten, to end it.

She could make changes for the people she cared for, the people she loved.

Loved.

She thought it was too early, way too early to say that she _loved_ Ezra, but she definitely cared. She wasn’t sure she had ever really loved anyone, anyways. Damon had never said anything like it – I love you - and she had never experienced what they talked about in _Streamer Girl._

According to her favorite series, love made you buoyant. It made you breathe in the Black. It made you light on your feet and it made you feel only good things. So, she wasn’t so sure.

Though, she thought she maybe loved her mother, especially when she held her photo in her hands. Sometimes she held it so close to her face that it became an impossible blur.

She was trying to see her mother’s smile perched just over her own baby-blonde hair, closer. And it made her feel …

From behind her she heard Ezra cough; it was a crackling, fluid filled thing.

She definitely cared.

* * *

Ezra was a straight talker.

As in, he said what he meant. He could lie – as she’d seen, in the Green – but somehow what he said always held the truth. He could wear her father’s face and be true to it, but still be himself. He could bring up the most unsavory things, in unsavory company, and hold the peace, all because what he said was backed by what was, and what was likely to be.

She couldn’t imagine her father bargaining with those mercenaries, let alone with a smile on his face. He hadn’t managed to do so with Ezra and his former partner, back when she had seen him, too, as an enemy. Back when that conversation had seemed rather easy to navigate, in comparison to all they’d seen since.

She knew this to be true but her knowing of it was solidified when she found a familiar packet of Stuff stowed away in her now sleeping compartment. It had been tucked under the platform, easily reached and not all that hidden.

More something to be used for later than something hidden from others.

She turned the familiar box over in her hands. The humanoid head, it’s expression one of maniacal enjoyment and bliss, seemed to stare into her. Red and yellow lines sprung away from the head as if to imply release, of dreaming, of something incredible and unattainable without aide. 

Three warnings on the bottom cried: _may cause hallucinations when taken in excess,_ and, _not regulated by the CDA,_ and, finally, _best with nourishment._

She remembered her father’s own kit. The same box, and two vials. She had never really known what was in the vials. Her father had purchased them on a junker-station. The labels had been handwritten; one had been done so in a language she couldn’t read.

All she knew was that one made him sleep and the other, when taken wrong – or so she suspected, there were no clear triggers – made him angry and accusatory.

“What’re you doing with that? Where’d you get it?” Ezra’s voice interrupted her own line of though; it was angry, accusatory.

“I – I found it. Under the bunk.” She started in a false start. She had seen people talk angry like this over the Stuff.

“That Stuff.” Ezra started, his hand ghosting to his stomach and then outward in placation. “It’s no good.”

“I know. I just – I just found it.” For a moment she couldn’t read the man in front of her. A flash of fear ran through her. She wondered if he could tell, tell that she had tried it once, recently. That she had felt strange and far away. That she had listened to music and painted the walls of the pod with expired nutrition packets.

How, on the comedown, she had shot him in the arm even though she’d been aiming for his head.

“Did you take any?” She frowned; felt as though he were overstepping.

“That’s none of your business.” She said, though she didn’t now why. Why make him think she had? Something stubborn inside her was rising.

She watched as his face did something complicated. It flit through several emotions. Her father had been less expressive and, thus, easier to read. This man looked as though his internal dialogue moved too quickly to keep up with.

“I’m not … I wouldn’t be mad. I’m just asking.” His arm was still raised as he took a step closer. He had that look, again. Tired. Drained. She noticed the smallest spot of red on his shirt.

“No.” Which was true, this cycle.

“Okay.” He said, and then, with a grimace and a voice low and worn.

“That Stuff. It messes with your mind. Turns you around and inside out. It might feel good at first but that’s its initial seduction – “

She knew that already. _Every being_ knew that.

“I know.”

“Okay.”

“Damon used to take it. So, I know.” Ezra looked at her. His expression fell in the same way it did when bad news knocked.

She looked away.

She had called him Damon because it felt kinder. It felt wrong to admit her father capable. But, Damon …

It didn’t matter. She wanted Ezra to know that she wasn’t some stupid child, kip to the Black. She, like her father, was a returner. She knew about the Black. Had seen things.

Though, as usual, they didn’t seem to be on the same page. Or, rather, she had guessed at his silence incorrectly.

“I want you to know that it wasn’t anything you did to drive Damon to it. It wasn’t any fault of yours, even if it feels like it.” Ezra said in that low tone; the one he used to settle small conflicts and the like.

His word settled, just as they had when he had told her, back in the Green, to blame him if her guilt had nowhere else to go.

He continued.

“Or, if you were told it.”

She wasn’t, not directly, but she understood why he said it. Ezra was a man of straight talk and left no fragment unturned.

“And, as I figure, it wasn’t completely his either.”

Her chest felt tight in that moment and she couldn’t even look at him. He, like her, forgave Damon of his vices. Even though it still made her so, so angry. It made her angry even when logic kicked in and told her there was no point in feeling anger for a killed man.

“Sometimes a thing just is in the Black.”

Later, without any particular ceremony, she would vacc-tube the little white box, sending it hurtling into the Black.

* * *

Cee created stories in her mind.

Ezra already knew this, but to what extent, he did not. If she were to be believed – and he would assure any being that she was - she was always crafting stories in her head. They were built of the things around her. She collected moments as they passed, all to keep, for later.

“I want to remember them. I want other people to experience and remember them with me.” She said while tracing the light across the pod as it moved with their rotation, her eyes flitting up and down, up and down. She looked immensely young. “I want Streamer Girl to experience it, too.”

“Sounds like a worthy practice.” He said as he felt another bead of sweat drain past his brow. It took him a moment to realize that she had fixed him with a most disbelieving stare.

“Truly.” He said, quickly. He believed he knew what she was thinking in the moment. He remembered that conversation in the Green clearly, even if some other chunks of time were missing or hazy. He remembered the way her tone had wavered from excitable and young to deadened, far beyond her years.

“I’m thinking of writing something of my own, soon.” She said, her mouth set in a serious line. Ezra could tell she meant it; even more, he could tell she wanted him, more than anything, to understand it

“People will always appreciate knowing that they are not alone.” He said, left arm drifting to cradle the returning threat of an unrealized ache in his abdomen. A sharp tug from inside nearly had him groaning; instead, he clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut.

It didn’t hurt. He didn’t think it did. It just felt … bad.

He hoped Cee wasn’t looking.

It passed and he looked towards her; she wasn’t, she was gazing out into all that Black, expression serene, hopeful.

* * *

Ezra had been someone else.

Before becoming a prospector, Ezra had been good at something else. Had enjoyed a very, very brief life of working towards different means.

“Literature. Poetry, sometimes.” He said and Cee felt as though she was reading a particularly delicious passage of a novel; the kind that ignited your interest over something unexpected.

“Studied it, actually.” She tried to imagine him at an Academy. Tried to imagine this man, blood stained and in dust-covered clothing, scar on his cheek, walking the steps of an academic institution. Holding books, or a data-pad filled with them.

“Like Streamer Girl?” It was the closest thing she could imagine, her own memory replete of any lived experience in such settings. The characters described in the Conservatory looked nothing like him, not that she could tell, anyway. They were all described as well-dressed, well-groomed. None of them had scars. None of them had odd tufts of blonde hair. Not of them had only one good arm, though she knew better than any being living that he hadn’t always been that way.

“I’m not sure about that.” He said it genuine-like, as though he were trying to remember, despite never having read it.

“Oh, she went to the Conservatory. She graduated top of her class and helped figure out this problem with converging time-streams and different space-continuums. She and her friends solved all sorts of problems, for beings all over. If I could have gone, I would have studied something like that.”

Heat rose to her cheeks with a sudden, surprising ferocity. She sounded like a _child._ She waited for the usual chiding, the usual frustration with her attachment to useless things.

Instead, another huff of kind-hearted laughter, “Well, I am remiss to disappoint. It was a very brief attempt. And nothing so serious.”

He said it in the way that all of their kind did in the quiet reflection of what had happened to put them in such dire, dangerous straits. She knew her own dire story began with her mother’s death and, to a greater extent, her father’s troubles.

She couldn’t guess exactly what had set Ezra on the path of prospecting. It could be anything. A lost lover. A war. A vice. She didn’t know and she wouldn’t ask. Not yet. Not while he was leaking blood in small, worrying rivulets from old foam.

She caught his eye as he looked down at the wound, and then back up at her. He looked at her in a way that made her feel as though he could feel, could hear her fears.

“What kind of literature and … poetry.” She couldn’t imagine it. Him. Reading poetry.

“Oh, all sorts. I liked it all. I am no writer and only a fool would cast aside what he himself cannot produce for taste.” Cee’s throat caught in an uncomfortable cramp when he emitted the smallest groan of pain, hyperventilating for a moment.

He collected himself very quickly and she was struck by how unlike her father Ezra seemed to be. Her father had rolled in anguish over headaches; had refused to eat over tooth pain. He comforted all ills with those little white pills, the same she’d tossed in the vacc-tube.

They must be disintegrated by now, she thought, the ones in the pod; she and Ezra had left the hatch-pod on the Green wide open.

“No, I’m no writer. Unlike you.” The praise made her uncomfortable, though she wasn’t sure why. So, she pressed.

“You don’t have a favorite?” He blinked slowly at her. He looked very tired but he acquiesced to her prodding.

“If I must choose –

“You must.” She tried, a rare taunt. She was enjoying this conversation, she realized.

“ – I’m fond of Rilknian.” He smiled even though his eyes were glassy and his breathing had returned to something hitched and unsettled; an accompaniment of new pain. Cee said nothing, unsure of whether the subject of conversation was a singular being, a place, a culture, a species … she didn’t want to seem anymore of a Floater than she already appeared.

He continued anyway, no hint of judgement or disdain.

“Nature, spent and exhausted takes lovers back into herself, as if there were not enough strength,” another catching breath, a huff of laugher at his own expense, at his own very slow deterioration, “to create them a second time.”

Cee turned the words over in her head. She was good at remembering words, for the most part. Not exactly as said or written, but the concepts. They stuck with her and turned over and over until she could digest them fully.

They were good words.

“I always liked that one.” He said, coughing lowly, just as he had in that dark, stinking-like-the-dead Sater hut on the Green.

Cee wanted to ask him to stop, as absurd as that was. She wanted him to stop looking so sick and awful and to tell her more about whatever Academy he may have gone to.

“Think I have to rest a tic.” He coughed again, held his hand against his chest. He looked as though he were trying to steady the rattle inside.

“Tell me another one.” Cee said, desperate to keep him.

She watched as he paused for a moment, appeared to be thinking. His brow pinched while his only hand swept up to brush sweat-laden, short hair up and off his forehead.

In a low, tired murmur:

“Sorry, little bird, I can’t think of any right now.”

* * *

Cee was stubborn.

She fought sleep as though succumbing to it would weaken her. She ate sparingly in protest of his own lack of appetite, as though she could threaten him out of his now eternal nauseated state. She catalogued the contents of the field kit each new cycle and then some as if to catch him straying from their carefully designed plan of care.

Stubborn.

He could sense a rising tension in her and was personally grateful that she’d thought to pack her rucksack way back in their initial evacuation of her own pod. He could have done with some creature comforts himself.

Now she was sitting at the main console, knees tucked up, hair covering her face.

Her headphones were clamped tight over her ears; he could hear the music through them, a testament to how dearly she was trying to destroy hear ear drums. He didn’t recognize the song, or the lyrics.

He hadn’t ever the chance to raise a child of his own, let alone a girl-child, but he imagined this was a classic example of teenaged-ness. One of those mercurial, dreaded mood swings.

If it indeed were, he could hardly blame her. She was, after all, facing tremendous adversity and what was probably very poor company.

The urge to cough seized him and he forced himself to swallow the remainders of a hydration pack. It felt like a wholly inadequate amount of liquid, despite the claims on the packaging: _a full cycle’s ration._

He coughed again, despite cooling his throat, and beat his left hand against his chest. There was nothing to coax out, nothing to loosen, but it made him feel as though he were at least attempting to shake the sensation that he was drowning. Wasn’t just _letting_ it happen.

It was nearly time to turn in, or so it was by the schedule they had informally set. Adequate, timely rest was important in the Black. Without it you lost sense of self, sense of place. When you gave up on the scheduled-life you gave up on any attachments to what was true; you dropped planet or moon-side, half-crazed, angry at the predictability of the cycle-driven life.

He watched as Cee picked up the tattered notebook, looked at it with listless eyes, and let it fall back to her lap. It appeared as though her own version of _Streamer Girl_ wasn’t holding her attention this cycle.

She looked tired. Her body looked tired. Her posture looked _tired._

By his count, she hadn’t a decent rest in at least two cycles; he’d certainly observed a nightmare, or two, by now, which supported his theory.

And, he can’t imagine she’d had any rest after her father’s death; he _knew_ she hadn’t while they’d been racing across that poisonous moon together.

“Hey, Streamer Girl.” He called out, only briefly noting that his voice sounded carbon-scorched, frayed and torn by unseen assailants from within. It wouldn’t inspire any confidence in the girl, wouldn’t lend him any authority, not that he intended to exercise any.

No answer.

She could have well heard him, but he couldn’t have known. She didn’t move, didn’t reach up to take the headphones off. Didn’t so much as turn her head just a little to the right.

He looked around for a brief moment, certain this junk heap had some kind of loose bit of slag lying around.

Ah. Perfect. He grabbed a small, errant scrap of metal – a washer, maybe – and tossed it at the console. It bounced off a blank, dead screen, onto her socked foot, and then to the floor.

She turned around and fixed him with the iciest, most unimpressed look he’d seen yet.

He ignored it, unperturbed. His single arm came up in a motion imitating the removal of a headset, albeit one with only one earphone.

She, surprisingly, complied.

“Excuse my interruption.”

Her face showed no sign of changing from the look she was serving him. Given time, she’d be an excellent potchka player.

“Though I appreciate whatever quiet conversation you’re having with the Black, I’m thinking it’s time we call it for the cycle.”

He coughed again, low and only slightly painful, this time. The pain, blossoming, was still manageable, but it was also consistent.

She stared at him, through him, and he couldn’t help but raise a brow, as if to demand: _what? What!?_

“I’m not tired.”

 _Ok, fine._ He thought; he believed he could reason with that, maybe.

But, he was so tired, all the way down to his bones, that he could hardly imagine _not_ being tired. Any decent argument died with that fatigue; he didn’t know how to defend what was so inherent to him, now.

“Still need to rest, though. Every being does.” He considered informing her that she was still growing but didn’t; he knew no girl of her age would welcome even a gentle ribbing when she had ice in her eyes.

“I’m not tired.”

He opened his mouth to add something else to the discussion, something undoubtably plain and uninteresting to a teenage girl.

And shut it as she pulled her headphones back on, turned bodily away from him so he could no longer communicate with her.

_Ok._

And, then:

_Shit._

_Shit._ He wondered if he had stepped over a line. A Damon-shaped line. He wasn’t _her_ father. He held no power, parental or otherwise, over her.

_Shit._

The cycles were wearing on her. On _both_ of them. But. He was the adult here. He didn’t have any good excuse to give in to his own wear and tear, Black-induced or otherwise. He’d pulled her – accidentally, he could at least admit – onto a wholly different path, abruptly, _violently_.

_Shit._

He’d once told her to blame him for her new sufferings, and he had stood by it. He still stood by it. If this was a latent death throe, grief for what was taken, he could do nothing but allow it to follow its natural process.

With a sense of self-repulsion induced by overstepping one’s station, he made an uncomplicated exit.

She didn’t need to be monitored, and she didn’t need him to bother her with all the things he thought important. Not after all that had happened.

If she needed him, she’d find him.

He tucked-in to his own pitiful sleeping pallet with a groan, a stuttering cough, and a sudden chill. The initial syrette, administered in the Green, had reached it’s maximum efficacy several cycles ago. The ride down had not been kind. He was now, in addition to his other ills, left with the strangest phantom pain in his missing right arm.

He took several grounding breaths as his mind bothered him over and over with the puzzle of how to release an imagined but very alive clenched fist.

At least he had his bodily misery to keep him company.

He huffed a breathy laugh meant only for himself.

A forgotten lyricism came flying back to him, absent after years and years of prospecting: _we violent ones remain a little longer._

* * *

Ezra was a dangerous man.

Her father would have called him something else: a bad man.

She had thought so, too, during the argument. It had been an easy quality to assign to him. He had cornered her father, pushed him to the ground. He had allowed his partner to stomp on his chest, to squeeze the air out of him. He had only relented when talk of earnings had been raised.

For the first two cycles in the Green, with _him_ , she had been terrified, though she wouldn’t say so. It only revealed itself in shaking hands and dropped weaponry. It showed in the way she ran, without a filter, into the Green when she realized – _thought_ – he was going to sell her for quick gains.

She knew Ezra was a dangerous man, but looking at him now, bent miserable and coughing over another ration pack – soman broth flavored, this time – she couldn’t recall the feelings of terror. She could only name them as a transient thing that had once happened to her.

“Hey.”

He looked up, circles under his eyes; he coughed into his fist.

“Hey.” He said back, a smile forming. He smiled more than she ever remembered smiling herself. She wanted to wipe it from his face; smiling, even when he was very possibly dying.

“Can’t say I expect –“ She cut off whatever he was about to say; she didn’t care about whatever it was he hadn’t expected.

“Where’d you get that scar?” She pointed, vaguely, toward his face.

The questioned sobered him, smile falling into pinched confusion. It was the reaction she wanted. Something inside her wanted to push him, this cycle. Maybe she’d gotten bored. She didn’t know or understand her own motivations.

“Now why would you want to know a thing like that?” She had been half-expecting him to tell her some nonsense about how rude it was to ask after a man’s scars; she could hear him saying so in her head.

“You said you were a killer, back on the Green.”

She couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement over his very clear confusion over her chosen subject matter. To him it had come out of nowhere, like an uncharted asteroid field, punching holes where holes didn’t need punching.

“I did say that.” A predictable response, she thought. He was terribly honest.

She looked him over as he abandoned his unsatisfying nutrition bar. He was also terribly exhausted looking. His skin gleamed with an unhealthy sheen of sweat, the silver bend of the scar even more apparent, just like the patch of blonde in his hair.

“So, how’d you get that scar.” A sudden wave of frustration built up inside her. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, or who she was mad at, but she _was_ , she realized _._ She was m _ad._ She was _frustrated._

“Killing somebody.” He said in a terse tone. It was the tone of someone who didn’t want to talk about whatever it was being talked about. He looked as though someone had spit in his o’cha.

His right shoulder twitched and she couldn’t help but think he had wanted to cross his arms, impossible now with just the one. He stared at her across the small space, waiting for whatever was next.

She crossed her own arms and stared back at him, unsatisfied. Where was the Ezra that talked mindlessly and aimlessly about any stupid, old thing?

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Cee didn’t believe it; nothing was ever _just it_ with Ezra.

“When?”

“A long time ago.”

She rolled her eyes; what a boring answer. It was the kind you would give to a child who couldn’t understand just how long, and how short life was. Too long to remember the details. Too short to care.

“Where?”

“The Green.”

How unsurprising, she thought. Had he been anywhere _but_ the Green. She thought of his old prospecting-suit. Ancient compared to her own. She thought of his short-cycle filter. Outdated and prone to premature failure.

“How?”

“With a knife.”

He hadn’t been carrying one when she’d met her father, she believed.

“Why?”

“ _They_ were trying to kill _me._ ”

Why had she even asked? It wasn’t an interesting story. It wasn’t like any of the characters in her book. It wasn’t intriguing. It didn’t build character.

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know.”

She was so _frustrated._

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

A latent part of her immediately regretted what followed, what she said next:

“Is that how it was with my father?”

She had never seen him angry. Not really.

She had seen him try to parlay through conflict, as he had with her father, with the Prospectors, all with a smile.

She had seen him defensive and frustrated back on the Green, when she delayed their trek, her own paranoia and disdain for him making their progress slow.

She had seen him in pain countless times, now.

She had seen him grateful, also in countless times.

She had seen him kill.

She had seen him kill _violently_ , but she wasn’t sure she would describe how he had been, how he had acted, as angry. The first time he had let go of the body as soon as he was sure it was a dead thing. The second time, he had slumped over like a dead thing himself when it was all over. He hadn’t even cast a glance at either of the persons he had killed.

It had been a thing of survival, of desperation.

She hadn’t remembered being angry either, now that she thought about it. She remembered being terrified. For herself. For Ezra.

Is that what it was to kill? To be terrified? She had always imagined it different.

She had never seen him angry.

Until now.

Anger on Ezra was a tight-lipped frown. Anger on Ezra was silence. Anger on Ezra was a long exhale and tense muscles. Anger on Ezra looked dangerous.

Anger on Ezra was …

Like something easily cleansed by a planetary rain; it all just fell away. His expression retreated into something miserable and free of any external ire. It was as though the anger had dug inwards and away from her before she could even recognize it for what it was.

He took another long breath and she felt as though she were about to begin shaking. He looked away, off towards an empty corner.

“No.” He said, but it did nothing to ease her inner turmoil. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” It felt as though it couldn’t be true. How could he not know?

“I can’t know, little bird.”

Her throat cramped painfully, and her eyes stung. She was going to cry. She was horrified. She was going to _cry._

She wanted to run, and she would have, given the space to do so.

Instead, she turned away with as much intention as she could muster, pouring all her discontent into her body language, and retreated to the sleeping quarters.

She closed the flimsy door. Locked it. He could sleep at the console, for all she cared.

* * *

Cee was young.

It was easy to forget. Her affect was one of someone who had lived long and hard in unsavory places, all lacking in any refinement or decadence. She required careful hands; intentional hands.

He’d obviously failed on both accounts; the girl had been locked up in the sleeping quarters for the entire sleep-cycle.

He hoped she had rested. Hoped she had slept.

Ezra had taken up her former vigil of the Black, trying to find sleep at the console. The angle of the seats were just so that one could, in exhaustion, find rest. He had managed a fitful moment or two, but ultimately, he had been kept up by no small amount of anguish, physical and psychological.

He had underestimated her needs; he had come to that realization while staring at a malfunctioning light on a broken panel, hand on his right shoulder, trying to release the ache.

He had to stop doing that.

Their conversation in the small space of the galley played over in his mind. Nothing he had said had been a falsity; none of it had been lies.

However, he hadn’t indulged in the fullness of truth.

He’d been confused when she’d asked about his scar. It was a small thing. It was something he often forgot about until the chance to look into a mirror presented itself. Even then he spent no time on it.

He’d been worried when she got to talking about killing. She’d coaxed it out of him, but he hadn’t thought she’d rest on the topic. Despite his experience in it, killing was no matter to rest conversation on.

He’d been frustrated when she’d persisted, one question after another, an interrogation. He’d known it could lead nowhere good, so he’d kept his answers precise and clipped. He could see her rising frustration with him, with his responses.

How was he to explain the mundanity of death in the Green?

A man, unknown to him by name and face, had entered his ramshackle tent during a pause in their prospecting and had tried to cut his throat. Tried to take what he’d earned from the poisonous soil.

The man had beat him, had torn the flesh of his face. The man had tried to strangle him when he fought back, when he’d managed to disarm him. The man slammed his skull down into the metal siding of his bunk _so hard_ that the hair that eventually grew back at the site of the gaping trauma did so in an off-white.

Then, even through the haze of a concussion, Ezra’s hands had gotten lucky. Grasping and searching, they had found the same knife that had been destined for his own throat; he’d brought that knife up, quick-like, and thrusted until the body above him went limp.

He’d felt sorry for his unwillingness to tell her the story, but he knew it would add nothing to her understanding of him. It was just more of what she’d witnessed of him at the Queen’s Layer. That’s all.

Finally, he’d felt angry, so lightning-quick that it surprised him.

_Is that how it was with my father?_

The words had set loose in him all the pre-occupations he had with himself; all his realized self-assessments, all concluding the same: that he was of poor character, and, likely, a very bad man.  
  
See, that _is_ how it had been with her father – a face to be forgotten, a battle won, a memory faded - until …

Until he got to know her. Got to know Cee. Now, reality blurred in a way all prospectors and people who made gains in fields of ill repute avoided and self-medicated out of themselves; now, he was reoriented with the already known truth that every kill he made sent ripples across water he couldn’t even see.

He couldn’t know if that was how it was with her father because now, as he remembered it, it was all a thing of regret. A mistake made by the congress of desperate men. Multiple missteps made by beings hardened by want of riches. Misfortunes sold to the lowest bidder with all the collateral damage falling, in full, onto the shoulders of a child.

His non-existent right arm throbbed. A nerve-pain unrelieved by any touch he could self-administer, by anything they had in their kit.

It seemed like a small payment for all the suffering he’d caused.

He closed his eyes against a particularly bright light, a reflection off of another pod’s heat reflectors. Another wave of sickness took him. His breath hitched on emotion, on pain, on what had to be a growing fever.  
  
Cee was young and didn’t deserve _any_ of this.

* * *

**ETA: Three-standard-cycles.**

He checked in with BG-Pivot Tower, confirmed their ETA and only briefly complained about the inconvenience of not knowing where one was destined to plant one’s feet.

Transmissions weren’t meant for long-winded complaints. They hadn’t so much as responded with a _copy_. Only radio-silence. Floater-speak for _shut-up._

Ezra leaned back deep into the seat. It was the same he had collapsed into upon their miraculous salvage of an equally miraculous situation. He hadn’t any memory of breaking atmosphere and had only come to as Cee had begun communications with the Tower. He’d muttered something about any location of good and decent means before passing back into a fitful state of unawareness.

And now, with seven-standard-cycles behind him, he could feel the syrette fully failing. The foam was dissolving into a state of non-potency. The salt and hydrations kits were less effective at maintaining his pressures and were near depletion.

He felt as though his body was failing. And indeed, it was. He hadn’t known any man to suffer an amputation, a stab wound, and a dust-infection, and live to tell any sort of tale.

But, the pain. The pain was becoming a problem. It was shocking, and with no suit to hide behind, he transmitted it all too clearly.

He felt like one giant exposed nerve.

Now, his body hitched and spasmed at every small, unexpected prodding.

He wheezed as he leveraged himself out of the control seat; it was becoming harder to move with intention, let alone with any grace.

The energy he’d gained after the amputation had been a rather false harbinger for things to come; his left arm and shoulder were in near constant complaint, now, and were weak with overuse.

 _Hydration packet. Replenishing salts._ His mind supplied as though he were some simple beast. Something deep and biological knew he needed help and it cried out for the only natural things it knew.

He made his way to the nutrition stores with the waddling gait of an old thing; his only hand reached out, bracing against buttresses, loose wiring, whatever would keep him up.

He was only slightly surprised to see that Cee, too, had the same idea. She was rifling through one of the store crates, loudly and unhappily. She must have heard him; with the speed only afforded to the youth, she turned.

He tried to skirt around her confident, unyielding path, but Cee still bumped him with an errant elbow in the too tight spade.

It had taken all his resources, physical and other, to not lash out at the poor girl.

She’d meant no harm, he was sure, but his wound had reacted as though deeply offended, slicing him open with a jolt of electric pain.

He had hissed, left hand launching into a defensive position over his gut. The movement also destabilized his compromised balance – he felt as though he was missing _more_ than just an arm, at times – and set him into a tumbling lurch.

He landed hard on his knees, his left hand abandoning its post at his stomach to catch him in a last-minute reach for the floor.

His vision escaped him almost immediately. Pain rocketed from knee, to abdomen, to shoulders, to _damn missing arm._

It took time, but when the black shroud retreated, his vision was filled with the face of a very worried Cee. She was talking but it all sounded like Ergke to him; moppy and muffled through ringing ears, his body just returning from the edges of a near-shock reaction.

“Whoah, whoah, sslow down, little bird –“ He said, or thought he said. He could hardly hear himself, “ – jus’ lost my bearingss for’a moment –“

He may have been slurring; his words didn’t feel formed. His tongue felt sluggish.

“ - no need t’get y’r flac-hose in’a twist.”

She was pulling him up, insistent that he get off of the floor and yes, he appreciated the sentiment, but the floor was proving a mighty adequate salve for his current suffering.

He wished he would just get on with it and _die_ , if that were to be the way of it; the girl had had enough.

“Don’you worry none – “

“Shut up. Sit.” She said, depositing him _back_ into that uncomfortable command seat. He hated this seat.

Then, his blood pressure did _something_ and he lost some time, woke up in a sweat fiercer than anything experienced in the past cycles.

“You got really pale … and fainted.” Her voice warbled somewhere to his right. They’d not been in the friendliest of places over the past two cycles, but he could hear the worry and the warmth return to her voice.

He wasn’t sure he deserved it. It felt manipulative.

“Imagine I did.” He had to keep his eyes closed; each time he tried to open them, to focus, to help, he felt the encroaching grey-black of unconsciousness. He felt terribly for her, having to take care of him over and over.

“Gotta excise the wound.” He said, pulling at his shirt, trying to take a look. His vision swam too forcefully for him to make good sense of what he was seeing.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

He waited for Cee to gather what he needed to excise the foam and wound. He looked down at his legs – still had two of those – and then at the exposed wiring, the peeling panels, the half-dim-dying lights.

He wasn’t sure he’d be able to get back up when all was said and done, and this was a sure and pitiful place to die.

* * *

Cee was very good under pressure.

He knew that already. Had learned it in a dusted tent with a half-working filtration-unit. She’d faced the removal of his arm, the amputation, with about as much emotion as a Sater in debate.

He’d watched her, in moments between the panic and the pain; he’d watched as her expression remain unchanged for the entire procedure, had listened as her voice failed to stray from a near-monotone of calm.

He had even remarked upon it.

At the time he had believed it due to their tenuous relationship. He hadn’t been a being of any value to her, save for the hope of escape from the Green. She wasn’t emotionally invested in him, and he wouldn’t have expected her to be, considering the unpleasantness that had tethered them together.

But, now.

He looked at her now, her eyes roving over their supplies, all set upon a carefully cleaned tray, and hoped she still wasn’t. Sure, they’d got to talking. Had shared some insights and vulnerabilities, but what use was a crippled, old man to a girl in the Black, and one with so much promise, so much ferocity and intelligence?

He had thought some of the same when she had bothered to return to him in the Green, field kit in hand. He had wanted to say – but couldn’t, not through the pain and failed filter – _run, girl_ , _hold that thrower straight and true,_ and, _fly, little bird - away from here before the Green eats you up, too._

He remembered being angry with her father, with Damon, for bringing a little girl to the Green, even as he lay there dying, pitiful and spent. He remembered being angry with himself for coming to words with the man, even after seeing he was accompanied by a child.

“Ok. It’s all ready.” She said and he was reoriented with the present. What he found in her face surprised and pained him.

Her brow was upturned, just so, in a wave of uneven worry. He knew better than to think that she didn’t feel or that she had a reduced and/or limited range of emotions. He knew, instead, that she was very good at hiding them.

A necessary skill that she’d developed without even knowing, evidence that she had taken her father’s words to heart. Perhaps, though, not in the way he meant them.

“Like I said. Do-on’t .. _ngk_ …worry none.” A wave of pain threatened to stop and attempt at speech but he was very good at talking. He’d say his piece.

“I’ll take care of this, little bird. You’ve done more … than your fair share of … wound care.”

There it was again: the small pinch of her brow, the errant twitch of her lip.

It was enough; a testament to how worried she was. Even after all _that._

“No.” She shook her head, brow still furrowed and discontented. “You can’t do it yourself. You can hardly stand.”

“Though that … may be t-true, I have to take fate into ..” the pain was sharp, then, and he needed a moment “ – into my own hands, for once.”

“You fainted.” She said, stubbornness _shining._ “Sitting down.”

He laughed, then coughed. Cee was funny, when she wanted to be.

“I want to do it.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I don’t have to, but I _want_ to.” He remembered their failed conversation about sleep. He remembered his overstepping. He realized he was doing it again, taking away her agency for choice.

For another uncountable moment she looked far too young. Her blonde hair stook up in places, a wild combination of bed head and a mean lacking of grooming supplies. Her skin, though clear and smooth, was a bit sallow from lack of meaningful meals and full sleep.

“Cee –“ He exhaled over a painful hitch in his chest.

There was nothing but a long silence between them, and then, to his own personal horror, he watched as her eyes got misty.

“I’m sorry.” Cee said it as she looked down at her hands.

Ezra sucked in a short breath, feeling, for the third, fourth, fifth time in too few cycles, repentant and lousy. He didn’t know why she felt the need to apologize when it had been him, all along, making the most overt transgressions.

He supposed, that in the mind of one so young, a few cold-shoulders and rude words were enough to create deep, unhealing wounds.

“No, no, you listen.” He had to swallow over a spike of pain.

“Before I put myself into your very capable hands, I’m the one who needs – needs to apologize.”

She looked at him, no less bothered, but attentive. Listening.

“This will be the third time that you have been forced into treating a wound for me – “ She opened her mouth and he knew it was the beginnings of an objection; he held his hand up to stay her.

“ – and I know you know that I … I don’t mean it literally because I would coerce you no further than asking –“Cee looked as though she _did_ know what he meant but didn’t at all like it. She was holding the excision tool limply, her thumb worrying over an edge. He had to wait a beat before continuing, lest he throw up.

“ – but, _but_ I am indeed sorry for the turn of events that have brought you here –“

Here in this bare-bones craft. Here at his side. Here doing too-adult things, path formed by too many uncaring adult-hands.

He was sorry for what Damon had done. He was sorry for what _he_ had done to Damon. He was sorry, most of all, for what he’d done to her.

“You are a real force … someone I would recommend _no_ being cross unkindly,” _pain, pain, pain_ – he continued, “- and you deserve better than what you’ve received, particularly from me.” 

She took her own deep breath. She looked him in the eyes, her expression only just a little less lost, albeit still tear-shining.

“Thank you.” Ezra said, and he meant more from it than the matter at hand. “ _Thank you_.”

He could see the line of her throat as she swallowed. He imagined she was unused to praise, unused to long-winded decency.

So unused to it that she wasn’t sure where it ended.

“That’s it.” He said knowing that, sometimes, a being weren’t so sure when he was done yammering.

She didn’t appear ready, but she seemed to surmount whatever thing hesitated inside her. She sniffled, wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve; it was the most vulnerability he’d seem from her and it hurt deep in his chest to see.

A hurt that was soothed near immediately when she slipped a delicate hand into his own open palm; she squeezed, fingers curling over the back of his hand.

It was the kindest touch he’d received in a long while.

Then, she cut.


	2. PART II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra was dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I extend my deepest thank you to all who have reviewed, kudo'd or simply read and paid this little thing some attention. I will respond to each of you - you are the life-force of the fan fiction community.

_In a study published by the Bowsun Conservatory Academy, it was found that since the opening of the BG Line, the mining of Aurelac was responsible for as many direct and indirect deaths as number of gems produced and released into the free market._

_The study implored Central, Kaslo Porting Freight Company and other governing or invested agencies to develop safety-infrastructure and regulations to support miners, and personnel involved in mining activities._

_Central responded to the criticism by discontinuing the Central-Bakhroma Green line, the last regulated route to the Green Moon._

_Bowsun Conservatory Academy published a secondary report, suggesting the decision would lead to more deaths._

_As interest and investment in the soon-to-be rare Aurelac rose, the report went widely unread._

* * *

Ezra was strong.

It wasn’t a thing that needed to be said. The past cycles, the time in the Green, was proof enough. If he were a character in _The_ _Streamer Girl_ , it would be his defining feature. He’d be the strong one, the tough one.

He’d be the one that would suffer needless wounds, un-instrumental to the plot, all for the purpose of reminding the reader that the _other_ characters were very mortal.

It was an obvious trait that had announced itself over and over again; it felt _contrived_ to even notice it.

But, it was very hard _not_ to notice.

It wasn’t just the kind of strength that beings _talked_ about. The kind that made a being hard to kill – he was, seemed to be, in a tragic way – or the kind that made a being frightening, intimidating. He wasn’t dead to pain or stoic in the way she’d seen in holo-transmissions, stories about average beings with the unusual ability to take a severe beating with little consequence.

His strength was different. Which is _why_ she noticed.

“Stop, stop, stop –“ He said and her hands froze. He was holding his breath. That couldn’t be good for him. He had done the same when she’d hit the bone of his arm. She had glanced up, then, sure he’d been about to pass out.

He hadn’t, even though she had selfishly hoped he would so he would stop talking in that odd prose-like elocution, lamenting his right arm.

He didn’t this time, either. But, _this time_ she was selfishly glad because she was fairly certain she would panic – _understatement_ \- if he did.

Before he’d been a frightening ticket home, up and off the toxic moon. He’d been someone who’s company was bearable, but not preferred. The idea of him dying had been distressing in as much the same manner as having found the pod to be irreversibly damaged; difficult, shocking, surmountable.

What she felt _now_ wasn’t even slightly comparable.

The idea of him dying twisted her stomach into an undoable knot. The tool in her hand felt heavier than it had before and her cuts – the two she had managed thus far – had been sure but underlined with the barest hesitation. It was the fear of doing it _wrong._

She’d had no such fear back in the Green. She had ridden on the confidence afforded by her time processing. She had treated his flesh as though it were that of Jata Bahlu. Something already dead and, if mangled, of no consequence.

When she’d started her work, it had seemed easy.

The foam had come away with little effort. It had been at the end of its utility, anyway. Without treatment it would degrade and let loose anything that hadn’t set to healing.

What was _under_ the foam, though ...

The wound had wept but little. Thin red rivulets tracing a neat line to the hem of his pants. Not concerning.

It was the black, the festering eschar that had made her throat close in worry.

She’d gripped his hand, misty-eyed and anxious, wiped away what she could, and cut.

Once.

Twice.

Then he’d stopped her.

Now, her hands hovered over the wound. Ezra was panting, hyperventilating, quick breaths that did nothing for his already pale complexion. He looked down and she leaned back to get out of his way, to allow him to visualize the wound.

This was the first time either of them were really seeing it.

No longer than her pinky, the edges were red and angry and the wound bed was blackened. It looked like something that would be _easy_ to treat in the right setting.

He groaned, looked up, head falling back into the headrest with a thump. The muscles in his abdomen twitched. He swallowed heavily. She hadn’t thought to grab something for him to vomit in; he looked like he was going to.

A new, albeit modest, pulse of blood.

The wound was deeper than it was wide. He hadn’t run himself through, but it had been a near thing. She wasn’t sure how far to cut. The sight of new blood set unease into her; it was a delicate balance, removing the black-rot and preserving whatever tissue underneath had set to healing.

Ezra hadn’t moved much, save to lift his shaking left hand up to support his left side. He looked as though he were trying to find some purchase to coax the pain away.

“Should we use the syrette?” It seemed logical. It seemed humane. She reached for the syrette, held it, waited.

His eyes were squeezed shut and he didn’t answer. For a moment she was taken by a wave of fear, fear that she would have to make a decision she didn’t understand.

“No, not – not now.” Ezra looked worse than he had in the tent, back in the Green, but he was no less clear about what he wanted her to do. What he _didn’t_ want her to do.

“Could drop my pressure if – if we u-use it now –“ She didn’t how he knew it, how this was different than pre-amputation, but she believed him. It sounded possible and she couldn’t imagine that he would _willingly_ suffer this for no reason.

“Should I –“ He grunted in the way her father always had when he wanted her to stop asking questions, when he was trying to sleep and she was making too much noise.

“Just wait, birdie. Wait –“ She wanted to yell at him, tell him that his pressure wouldn’t matter if they couldn’t finish. She wanted to tell him how _stupid_ he was being.

He coughed a bit, grimaced against the pain it had inadvertently sent through his body. He was visibly feverish. His hair was all but matted to his scalp. He looked like a drowned thing.

_Stupid._

_Just take it._

_Why won’t you just take it._

And then she realized, she _knew_ where her frustration with him had been coming from. Finally. She knew what had had her in such a foul mood, what had turned her against her new companion with such force.

She didn’t like seeing him in pain. She didn’t _want_ to witness this. She wanted it to _stop._

She’d been less affected before, when they had been trekking across the Green. _What’s wrong with you_ , she’d said, even though it had been clear as he stumbled through scrub. _Does it hurt,_ she’d asked with cold clinical interest as she amputated his arm.

_Take the stupid syrette._

She thought about uncapping it and thrusting the needle in the same place he’d done a couple of cycles ago.

She knew she would have taken it. She knew Damon would have taken it. Ezra was _strong_ in the absolute worst way; logical and unflinching when _maybe_ he shouldn’t be.

“Ok, go ahead –“ Ezra said it but didn’t sound at all ready.

“Are you sure? I think -”

“I’m sure. Just don’t let –“ He cut himself off as though unhappy with his wording and then finished in an all too fast exhale.

“Remember to hold steady. Watch … watch the strokes. Not too … deep, lest we want a r-real challenge on our hands.”

She could have told him that she already _knew_ that, that this was a repeat of the conversation they’d had last time but … he looked worried. His eyes seemed to fall in and out of focus, even as he nodded at her to continue.

Without another word – verbalized, at least, her mind still thinking _stupid, stupid_ – she returned to her work.

She pushed the excision tool into the wound, stayed her hand even as he jerked. Black-rot flayed away, removing the infection while also inflicting small traumas to the surrounding tissue.

“Oh shit, oh fuck –“ a litany of swears followed. Some familiar, some completely foreign.

She pushed deeper because that was where the black was. New blood appeared. More rot was excised. Ezra was hyperventilating making it even harder work; she was afraid his movements, all natural and necessary, would drive the blade deeper. This was _nothing_ like processing Jata Bahlu.

Something hot and warm slid down her right cheek.

“Hold on.” Cee said, though she wasn’t sure why; she’d just needed to say _something._

The blade suddenly gave a bit, and –

Ezra howled.

It was one of the worst things she’d ever heard.

She pulled the tool back and out of the wound. Immediately, blood and black followed.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry …” She fumbled for the patch gun, tried to ignore the sounds of utter agony that Ezra was clearly trying to quell. She wasn’t looking directly at his face, but she could see from her periphery that he had clamped his left hand over his mouth.

As she pulled the safety from the trigger, she was taken by how _unfair_ this was.

As she wiped the blood and black from his abdomen, again and again until there was no more black. Despite her indelicate movements, the raw dragging of cloth over wound, Ezra did not shy away.

She hazarded a look at his face and wish she hadn’t.

His hand was still over his mouth, eyes clenched tight as anything. She could tell he was trying to regain control of his breathing, but was failing. Each breath was accompanied by a sound of hurt, though nothing had reached the level of his agonized howl, and each one tore at her.

But, worse. His face was wet.

He didn’t seem to be trying to put any effort into holding onto some sort of pain-free façade; tears ran free from the corners of his eyes.

She felt her own cheeks grow hot as her already overwatering eyes, on the precipice for cycles, gave up on trying to hold all of _it_ back.

She _hated_ him in that moment.

 _Why can’t you just get_ _better?_ She thought, back of her hand reaching up to scrub away the hot wetness on her cheeks.

 _Why is this so_ _hard?_ She was shaking.

With the wound cleared of as much black as possible via their inadequate set-up, Cee raised the gun to the wound and injected the foam.

Ezra didn’t howl this time, didn’t scream or curse. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t _do_ anything.

 _I hate you._ She thought as the patch gun hissed, empty.

He took a stuttering breath and went limp in a dead faint.

* * *

Cee was industrious.

Ezra came to pained self-awareness from a deep state of unconsciousness – one he hadn’t even realized he had indulged, or more likely, succumbed – to what he had decided to catalogue as one of the _most_ annoying sounds he’d ever had the displeasure to hear.

It was _that_ music. Again.

That primal thing inside all beings, the presence that made one jump at the suddenness of all unanticipated events, tried to convince him that he was back on the Green. Tried to convince his already fever-struck self that he was experiencing some form of assault by the mercenaries who’d so nearly gotten the upper hand.

He shot up, best he could with the pain in his chest. His right shoulder burned with the attempt to _grab_ an unseen assailant. His left arm caught something hard, but displaceable. Something - many somethings - clattered to the ground.

Then a barely audible, human-sounding yelp of surprise. It was hard to discern whether it was produced by a nearby being or by the music.

He was pushed back down, two firm points of pressure on his upper torso. He couldn’t imagine he’d made hard work for the hands that had reacted so quickly; he was weak, every bit of him.

Every single bit drained of any vitality.

He wouldn’t have put up much of a fight in this state. _Especially_ with the ringing in his ears, the steady throb in his head. It was trying to beat in concert with the same bass rhythm that shook the ground. The fast tempo made him feel disoriented and ill.

He groaned. He thought he groaned. He could feel the vibration in his throat, but he couldn’t hear worth a damn.

“Sorry, sorry –“

Cee, his mind supplied rather immediately, the memory of the past cycles returning in full.

 _Apologizing_ again.

He finally managed to crack his left eye open; a light from the Black blinded him. Sent him into the throes of renewed nausea.

He tried again and managed both eyes this time. It wasn’t a light from the Black, it was an aggressive, distorted HUD interface depicting an old trajectory map to the Green. The mercenary’s map to the prisoner’s ritual execution; to the Queen’s Lair, though by pure chance.

Cee must have been using it as a light. He had no memory of her turning it on. He had no memory of it’s existence.

The music continued and he craned his neck, trying to see where his companion had gone. He dearly hoped she was putting all her efforts into making _it_ stop. He was absolutely going to vomit.

“Hold on!” She said, shouted.

She must have hit buttons at random until she had gotten what she had wanted, and then, in her haste, forgotten which one had triggered this musical nightmare.

The _why_ of her actions was still in question. Though he was sure he’d hear about it. He doubted she’d been feeling inspired to reacquaint herself with auditory memories of the Green. Maybe she had needed something to dance to after he’d finally kicked it.

The HUD dissolved; that was one source of irritation solved.

“Wait,” she shouted, and then, “got it.”

The music ceased and the space filled with quiet. It was almost as startling as the noise itself and left him with an odd, lingering hum. His eardrums were vibrating with it.

He sucked in a breath, wanted to say, _now, what did I do to deserve that?_ but hadn’t neither sufficient breath nor energy.

Instead, he made an inarticulate sound and tried to peel himself from the seat, wanting to lean forward if to ease the nausea.

“Got it.” She said again, unnecessarily, as she rejoined him at his side. Her hands landed on his back, easing him forward, facilitating his pathetic attempt to reposition himself.

“You wouldn’t wake up. I tried … I tried _everything._ ” He didn’t know what ‘everything’ was, but he must have been _deep_ if it had taken time and aggressive, audio-visual measures.

“I – I couldn’t think of anything else.”

He huffed a very dry, exhausted chuckle. _Smart girl._

“How long –“ He couldn’t finish a sentence for the life of him. He felt communicatively neutered, was affronted by his inability to express himself. He’d at least said the important bit of the question.

“A while. I’m not sure. I was, it was – “ He needn’t hear more, nor did he require anything longer than a glance to know that she’d been scared.

“’S fine.” It didn’t matter, he supposed. More a thing of curiosity. He felt significantly worse than he had in cycles, and that was data enough.

“How’d we do?” Clipped and short was good. It kept the ache in his chest and abdomen at a howl rather than a shriek.

Everything hurt. _Everything._

His non-existent right arm _burned._ His shoulder spasmed with quiet fasciculations, exhausted from false overuse. His eyes burned in that grainy, swollen way that one associated with crying. His head throbbed. He was hot and cold all at once. He was terribly thirsty and he wondered, briefly, if you could lose every drop of fluid in your body to sweating.

What a mess.

If Ezra were being honest with himself, and he was, mostly, it didn’t feel very _survivable_ ; his cycles indeed felt more numbered than they ever had before.

“I … think I got most of it.” She said, hesitant, likely unsure whether she could rely on what little she likely knew about real medical care. “I’m pretty sure I did.”

From his hunched position he could make out the yellow-white of the foam through the slit in his dirty shirt. They hadn’t much in the way of clothing, and he knew this was the best he could do in regards to protecting it; he’d take the dirty shirt for the thin barrier it was over roaming shirtless for the next few cycles.

He also imagined he smelled terrible, but there was nothing for it.

“What else do you need?” Cee sounded both so young and so adult then; ready to help, and desperate for guidance. She was sitting on her knees at his side, hands ready to reach into the diminishing field kit.

He looked at her and felt a twinge of guilt over the still clear tear tracks that had dried upon both cheeks. When this was all done and over, he’d find a way to repay her.

He’d find some kind of way to make sure she’d either forget this, or receive worthy recompense, something that would make the terrible memories worth it.

“Anti-microbe.” He paused; he was so terribly breathless. “Hydration pack. Stimulant.”

“Okay.” She picked through the kit. The only luck they’d had thus far was the fact that the anti-microbe was reasonably stocked. It was probably the only reason he hadn’t made his bed in the Black cycles ago.

Still, he was putting it to work; he’d not spent a single cycle without some form of fever. He imagined it was moderate, now. High, but not high enough to kill.

“Syrette?” Cee said, hope clear in her voice. There was something very warming about her clear care for him, her desire to see him well. It was a special thing, to be cared for in the Black. He couldn’t recall the last being that had.

Whatever ire they’d had floating between them before seemed to have died; they’d come out on the other side and he was honestly, pitifully grateful.

He sucked down the hydration pack she’d handed to him. It soothed his throat and sent a pleasant, cooling sensation through his veins. He could have wept, it felt so good.

He choked a bit, on the last swallow, but recovered with a quick cough.

“After the stimulant.” He said as he popped the aforementioned pastille; it tasted awful. He wasn’t sure _why_ the medicine included in the field kits were so damn chewy.

He knew it was a bit of a bargain, taking a stimulant in this shape, but he’d decided to put all his Aurelac in the same case. If it helped his blood pressure any, it was worth the possible come down, swift as it would probably be. He _thought_ he had enough cycles to avoid it.

Most importantly, it would allow him to make use of that syrette. He’d seen the way a body could bottom out from a bad combination of failing pressure and the syrette’s analgesic component.

He wasn’t going to make it without the help, anyway. Cee wouldn’t, either. He would rather he drift off into a belated, pressure induced crash, die from the slow failure of his heart and lungs, than subject her to cycles of pain-riddled delirium.

It took some time - time he was hardly aware had passed - but he eventually felt some return to a state that he would call bearable. Cee hadn’t budged for even a moment of it; when he finally could manage, he held out his hand.

“Okay, little bird.” She was eager in her passing of the syrette; she gave it to him with two hands, one placing it in his palm, the other passing under the backside of his hand, as if to support him should the small thing be too much to lift, to hold.

By now, Cee didn’t have to wait to be asked to help; she lifted his shirt, once again, and looked at him expectantly.

A few quick breaths and he plunged the needle in.

He would have _thought_ he would be used to this by now. But. It hurt just as it had the first time. And the second.

He hadn’t the energy to make much more than an animal-like whimper. His throat was scorched, he’d both talked and pain-hollered his voice raw. There wasn’t much left. Now, he was left with the hoarse voice of a dying man.

Ezra waited the appropriate amount of time and pulled the needle, using the momentum to toss it at the console. With his luck, he’d probably stick himself with it later, develop rot and lose a finger on his remaining hand.

He had _no clue_ how he’d gotten this far in life without ever having had to use a syrette and then had arrived at a point in which he’d used three in less than a dozen cycles. How he’d made it several decades in his work with naught but a few silver-shining scars and an odd patch of blonde hair, and then lost his arm and suffered a near-fatal stab wound in the span of seven.

It was as if a life of bad work and character had all caught up with him in a single moment.

He suspected it to be true

There was, after all, an _orphan_ he had made by his own hand staring back at him. Evidence of a life poorly lived. Evidence of a certain kind of justice in the Black.

“Is it working?” Cee’s interjection was quiet, as though she knew he was struggling. He looked over at the girl, gave her as much a smile he could manage.

“It’s working.” It was, to an extent.

Not like the first time when he’d bore the amputation with hearty attempts of mindful breathing and self-distraction. Not like the second time when he’d felt, within moments, his strength return to him as though carried by the tides of a rather swift wind.

This time he felt a bit far away, more as though he were ambivalent to the pain rather than free of it. He felt as though he weren’t completely present.

“Good. That’s good.” She looked so _pleased_ and he wasn’t about to do anything to destroy that.

“Think you can stand?” She asked, hopeful as anything.

“For you, birdie,” he lurched a bit, this time over the odd weakness ins his legs, “of course.”

* * *

Ezra was forgiving.

Not just of her small errors, though it was much appreciated.

She’d sent him sprawling, earlier that cycle, with the gentlest bump of an elbow. It was with the personal horror of too late self-reflection that she realized, _admitted_ to herself, that she had done it on purpose.

It was a language she was familiar with, microaggressions and small jabs. Her father had called her the _doyenne of the cold shoulder,_ and, _ice-core royalty._ She’d never been to the shimmering bands of the ice-core but she didn’t think it was a good thing.

She’d wanted to voice her displeasure without saying it. Had wanted him to see that she was upset. She hadn’t wanted him to have the chance to _talk_ his way through it.

But, she hadn’t wanted _that_ , what she’d received.

He hadn’t said anything about it, and she imagined he wouldn’t. She wished he would, if not to clear the air.

He _continued_ to forgive her as she struggled to adequately support his weight. He was heavier than he had been when they’d made a break for the craft. He’d been healthier, then, despite the recentness of both injuries.

He didn’t say anything when her foot caught on the corner of an angular piece of buttressing, sending them both into the smallest of stumbles. He whimpered, paled, but didn’t say _anything._

He especially didn’t complain when she tried, but failed, to facilitate a smooth landing in his bunk. He came down a bit hard, legs weak and shaking, but kept any displeasure to himself, even as she could see a bodily thrill of pain shoot from hips to head.

“Thank you.” He even said as he settled, only hand gripping the bunk’s frame and breaths too fast for comfort.

 _Is that okay?_ Her panicked mind thought, a desperate grasping for wisdom, a plea for it to spontaneously develop within her. _He’s breathing too fast._

“I can get some more hydration packs. Some salts, or … or, are you hungry? You should eat something.” Anything to make him look less devastatingly ill.

“Don’t fret yourself.” At least he was talking more clearly; he’d been slurring, before, and it had made her incredibly uncomfortable. Verbosity suited him, even when it was _annoying._

“I’m just …just … balancing out. Have a lot of chemicals on board here.” He did, but it wasn’t anything more than he’d been taking.

“But, the stimulant.” She stopped, not sure what to ask. As she understood, it should have been _stimulating._

 _Why isn’t it working like last time?_ She could scream.

“It’s working. I suspect it is fighting a … a losing battle with the syrette and the blood loss. I wholeheartedly apologize on behalf of both.” A tired laugh followed; the slow failure of his body seemed to be a subject of amusement for him.

She didn’t like it.

“We should, I should’ve –“ she shook her head in a furious negative.

“ – before, I - I tripped you. On purpose.” She bit her cheek, tried to keep her expression serious, ready to accept responsibility.

Instead he laughed in a tired exhale.

“That’s ok. Bold.”

He sounded like he meant. He was grinning in an exhausted way, eyes drooping. Her heart clenched; _oh,_ he meant it.

“And, I .. I think I went too deep. I think I did it wrong. I didn’t, it was different than the arm.” She admitted, terrified.

His hand reached out, seeking one of her own, and he held it, gently. Squeezed slightly. She didn’t want to cry again, but she felt as though she may.

“No, no. You did great. A great job. Trust me, Cee.” Ezra said, pleading. Her own name grated on her. She thought of him tripping over himself again, her elbow jutting out, a mean sharp thing, despite his apparent amusement over it.

“It’s okay. All of it. Got it?” He looked so tired, so spent as he looked at her. He looked like a shadow of the figure that had so terrified her back when she’d first encountered him.

“Got it.” She croaked, a thing that was more a whisper than anything else. She didn’t trust her voice.

“Good.” He huffed and she could see his energy bleeding out of him.

“Gotta’ lay down. Just for a bit. Just .. a bit.” Before she could help, he swung himself into a laying position with a speed she had been expecting. Though, he had probably collapsed more than _tried_ to lay down so quickly.

“Okay.” He exhaled, as if settling into his own poor condition.

He didn’t say anything more. He just _lay_ there, breathing fast and sweating and looking _terrible._

She felt a stomach-turning jag of terror. She hadn’t felt anything like it since her father had been killed.

“Let me … let me get something to make you more comfortable.” Cee felt _useless_ , felt stupid over her inability to offer, to think of anything more than scraps of fabric from her own bunk.

She scrambled across the small space, felt time pressing down on her. Why couldn’t she be like _The Streamer Girl,_ like Clo or Rieve. They would know what to do. Would have more to offer than dirty rags.

She gathered the majority of what she had in her bunk, a combination of cloth-possessions from various deceased mercenaries, and turned them over in her arms, bundled them.

It took no time at all for Cee to rejoin him, but in that sliver of time, he had fallen into unconsciousness. Panic had her looking at his chest for signs of life. He was breathing too shallowly for her to hear, if he were breathing at all.

She dropped the cloths and nearly flung herself on top of him as she placed a hand on his chest, her ear close to his mouth. Her terror didn’t resolve itself, even as she could hear the quiet in and out of his breathing, could feel the gentlest chest rise and fall under her hand.

Her own heart was thundering in her chest, her eyes prickling and hot.

She’d thought him dead, and all in the barest moment, nonexistent by most counts.

Looking at him, the fear returned. She _must_ have done something wrong, despite his assurances. She could remember him telling her, in the Green, that he’d botched the excision. She’d thought it had been because he’d done it weak handed, but now she worried that perhaps it was because it was actually a delicate procedure, one far more complicated than described.

She wasn’t sure she could live with herself if she’d truly done something wrong, if she were to be the hand of his demise.

She returned to the cast aside cloths and bundled a few under his head, trying to give him a more comfortable alignment – his former position had looked painful, on top of everything else - and then threw what was left over his body.

She stayed there for a moment, perched on her heels, willing him to wake up but knowing he wouldn’t.

Cee felt the weight of his condition bare down on her, knew she was, ultimately, the reason for it.

She’d _never_ forgive herself if he died here, on this strange ship.

She knew _he_ would.

* * *

Cee was tender.

It was something that had only begun to reveal itself once she had started to trust him. It had started with her wistful, joyful talk of her favorite novel. Then she’d told him her name in a light admission that had him turning around to meet her proper.

From there it had progressed to her - _very inadvisably_ \- saving his life, risking life, limb, and precious time.

And now, he awoke to a further advancement in his understanding of the seemingly very deep well of her kindness, her tenderness.

Something cool was being pressed onto his forehead; it felt impossibly good. He was truly becoming a man of immensely simple comforts, Aurelac be damned.

“Hey there, little bird.”

She gave him the saddest little smile.

“Hey there, Ezra.” His brows lifted on their own accord, a thing of surprise. He hadn’t been expecting _that_ , though it was completely possible he had hallucinated it.

“Oh … so .. we’ve decided my name isn’t … so weird, then? Do my ears deceive?” Each word felt like a struggle, but it felt good to talk, to engage in meaningful conversation.

“Don’t _make_ it weird.”

“Hmm.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“Scraped some frost from the coolant coil. I couldn’t get much, there’s just the one.” _Clever girl_ , he thought with a surge of appreciation. He’d have allowed himself to bake from the inside out, wouldn’t have thought to scrape the coolant coils.

“And I didn’t want to leave for too long.” She was _far_ too kind for her own good, he thought. She’d invested far too much time worrying over him. _Him_. A man who’d killed for the want of riches. Who’d rarely engaged in acts of kindness and good will.

It was all very unreasonable, all very contrary to what life in the Green and the Black was supposed to be.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better.”

It wasn’t a lie. He felt better. He felt like he could stay conscious for a while longer. He felt as though his pressure was evening out - his heart had ceased its palpitations for the moment - and the pain was only background racket at this point. Something that only reminded him of its presence when he looked for it.

But, he was still weak. Weak enough that he was pretty sure that this bunk was _it._ This room would be his only scenery for the duration of the trip, save for desperate retreats to the refresher.

“That’s good.” Cee was relieved. He could see it in the way her shoulders dropped, in the way she redirected her attention to whatever she was now rustling with.

“Here.” He tilted his head to see what it was. She was offering him the last of their moc-cucāo bars. It was already open, ready for him to eat.

He gave her a small smile, tried to, and reached for the offering. The amount of effort it took seemed immensely unreasonable. He grasped it but didn’t make any move to eat. The mere thought made him nauseous.

“You have to eat something.” The tension he’d only just expelled from her frame returned. Her voice as tense as her body.

“Not sure I can.” He didn’t want to set her expectations too high. He wasn’t doing well, he knew that.

“You need to.” She said firmly as she did her best to stare him into submission. She was right, of course, but the energy just wasn’t there. The _drive_ , however. Her desperate gaze, the ever-present wetness of her eyes, pushed him.

He got his left elbow under him, managed to sit up just a bit, allowed her to help him get has back against the wall. It felt good to sit up, even if it stirred the pain the syrette was trying to smother.

He allowed himself a moment to settle into the position. It _did_ feel better to sit up; he hadn’t realized it but laying down had taken on a bit of a suffocating quality. It hadn’t been that way before, but it was not as though he had assumed his situation would _ameliorate_. He’d been doomed to the decline.

He needed something solid under his feet, he decided, even with that residual dizziness that came and went. There was just something immensely uncomfortable about sitting straight-legged liked this, forced his back and abdomen to hold himself in a way that was too strenuous.

Leaning his weight on his left arm, he swung his legs so his feet were planted on the ground. The movement startled Cee; she moved to brace him, unsure of what he was trying to do.

“Wait, you can’t –“

“Just getting … comfortable,” it was generous, calling anything he could do as of late _comfortable,_ “if we’re to share a meal.”

At least talking was easier. The syrette worked wonders that way, made him a little less air hungry.

Her own rationed meal, a BIT BAR, sat next to her. He knew she wouldn’t eek much nutrition from it, but neither of them were any place to complain. He couldn’t imagine the mercs sitting down to these meals, let alone bunking together on this ship.

The ship – Ezra spared a thought to it as he’d become far too intimate with its ins and outs over the past cycles - was a miserable thing; he’d traveled on many like it and this one was particular grungy. 

Ezra thought of the mercs mission; something vile, even by his tastes. He wasn’t a man of ceremony. He’d have shot the poor bastard.

Ezra hadn’t failed to notice that there was no hold, not one for the size of the prison the man had been encased within. It was with a far-off, human stab of pity that he realized they had probably lashed the para-clear prisoner transport to one of the ship’s external docking holds. It seemed to fit with the tortuous method of execution, time spent with nothing but the Black on all sides, bare minimum of oxygen and warmth.

Cee didn’t need to know that. They could sit and enjoy their pathetic meals and try not to think about the former owners.

Cee opened her own pack, took a bite; she chewed, looking bored by the act of eating.

“Good?” He asked half-joking. She looked _miserable_ eating it and there was something childish about it.

“It was better back on the Green.” He couldn’t help but laugh; it was the same thing he’d tossed at her in the tent. She’d enjoyed it more then, by all appearances.

He bit into his own bar, chewed slowly.

The sweetness cloyed to the inside of his mouth. What had formerly been a decent, fine nutrition replacement, was now a nauseating, saccharine mess. He stifled a gag. He and Cee were on the same page this cycle.

With a grimace he put the bar down.

“That’s it?” Cee looked disappointed; she was on her second serving, an impressive feat for someone who seemed to dislike the bars so much.

“Hmm. Maybe later, birdie.” Another bite and he’d be liable to lose it. He wasn’t quite willing to put his body through more trauma, especially one so unsavory.

Cee looked upset, as though she’d guessed wrong, done something wrong. Which, she hadn’t, of course, but he knew her moods trended towards mercurial.

He searched for a point of conversation, something to pull her from a small, self-destructive tear.

“Tell me more about … about _The Streamer Girl._ ” He felt slightly revived but something inside him was insistent that he break his sentences into halves; it was aggravating.

“Really?”

She told him as much as she could without spoiling it. She still insisted that he _read_ it, that it was better than what she could explain. That the characters were interesting and complicated. That they were smart and funny and knew _so much_ about _everything._

Her voice had taken a wistful tone for the entire telling. She gladly answered his questions, though they seemed inadequate for how large the universe was, for how passionate she felt over the material.

He pushed himself back to lean against the wall a bit, feet still planted on the floor, let her tell him about her theories and thoughts. She told him about the pieces she had filled in, about the relationships and how nuanced they were.

“I try to imagine what I would be like, if I were there.” She had said something similar, back in the Green.

“What it would be like to study, and – and do amazing things. Travel because I _want_ to. To have friends.”

Ezra furrowed his brow. It should have been obvious; he’d met her in the Green with her father. She was a child and she had been in _the Green._ He wasn’t sure that any _prospector_ had ever brought a girl child, their own especially, along as their partner. He’d never seen it, certainly.

So, it wasn’t so unbelievable that Cee would be friendless. She was, after all, a _Floater._

Life in the Black was _lonely_ ; Ezra knew that intimately, but _he’d_ never been a teenage girl. He’d had a youthhood with relationships. What she was describing was familiar to him as an adult, a young adult as well, and though he’d had an unconventional childhood, he could recall having had a friend.

She paused, looked at him, blinked as though she’d been in a trance, which, to an extent, was true. She was a different person when she talked about her favorite novel; her voice lightened, the shadows of her eyes lifted, her lips curled upwards in a definite smile.

Ezra was both simultaneously glad that she had access to that version of herself, and sorry that it could only be invoked, that whatever it was made of may have become a thing hard to access. Something that, with time, would drift farther.

He remembered feeling such passion himself, once, long ago. He remembered watching it drift away, slowly, still seen but small. Then, it transformed into something alien and hard to recall, his former life as foreign as a stranger’s. At last, the peak of the transformation: personal preoccupations replaced by _need_ of points, evolving via the hand of a hardened, vengeful life into _want_ of riches.

“Sorry,” She shook her head, expression falling; she looked shocked by what she’d voiced aloud. Ezra suspected it was only a small sampling of her inner world.

“I didn’t mean – it must sound pathetic.”

“Of course not.”

“Anyway, I – I still think you should read it. I don’t want to spoil anymore.” Ezra imagined himself reading _The Streamer Girl_ , bent over the first novel he’d read in an age, a piece written with teenage girls and boys in mind.

“I’ll be sure to.” He would have liked to.

He coughed lowly. He was tired. Cee continued, not noticing; he was glad for it.

“The ending is … it’s perfect. It’s so good.” She shook her head as if in disbelief over how perfectly written the story was; he hoped she would use some of his measly points - a point not yet brought up -to buy a new copy. A good, fresh copy that no one had ever read before.

“A happy ending, I hope.” Ezra rasped; she deserved a happy ending, fictional or otherwise, and he didn’t imagine he’d be disappointed.

She nodded, a bright smile.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think you’d like it.”

Ezra thought he would have.

* * *

**ETA: Two-point-five-standard cycles.**

An alarm sounded.

An announcement from Tower. A reminder that the end of the journey was near.

They didn’t need to do anything, the automated message, delivered in a monotone, played over the speakers without prompting or intervention.

_All small-crafts be advised of drop in two-standard-cycles, full completion in two-point-five-standard cycles. Please perform required maintenance and craft-safety-checks at this time. Unload all vacc-contents by end of cycle. Vacc-release in orbit is prohibited and warrants a fine and/or banishment from all Central Towlines. Slingback from Central to be announced. Thank you for your patronage._

Silence followed.

Ezra and Cee looked at each other from their prospective bunks.

They didn’t say anything.

It felt risky to acknowledge that salvation may be at hand, as though it may _invite_ another poorly dealt hand.

* * *

Cee was _trying._

True to his word, he tried to eat again later, aware of the fever, the weak _pull_ , and the angry stab of pain in his stomach.

He made it through a couple hearty swallows before it became too much.

He must not have hid his misery well for Cee launched towards him, fumbling and resurfaced with an empty container.

She thrust it in front of him. He just barely managed to drop the bar and grab the thing. His right shoulder protested with a sharp sting as it tried to join in on the desperate grab.

He felt a small, personal moment of miserable embarrassment over his predicament. Here he was, puking into an empty fazer solution tray in front of this little girl. He’d been humbled, over and over, by his failing body, but it was becoming too much. There truly was no dignity in death in the Black.

He spit the acid taste from his mouth, closed his eyes in an attempt to calm the rebellion in his stomach and the throb in his temples.

“I – I’m sorry. “ Cee sounded mortified, and he didn’t blame her. “Are you okay?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” He muttered miserably, not trusting his stomach to not rebel over anything less than a rushed placation.

“Let me –“  
  
“I got it.” He bit out, snapped.

He held the putrid thing up and out of her reach. He had to draw a line somewhere. This was the line he was drawing; it was a meager, stupid line, given how she’d been forced into such physical invasiveness as it related to his own person, but she wasn’t some bunk-maid.

He wasn’t sure how he was to manage this gracefully, one-handed, and it wasn’t the first time he felt a stab of grief over the loss of his arm. He hadn’t much time or presence of mind as of late to internally mourn and lament the loss of limb. He’d waxed a bit in the tent but hadn’t gotten far; he’d never forget the feeling of a Ralon laser scalpel on bone.

Ezra felt terrible, worse with each advancing inch of the cycle. Adrenaline no longer allowed him to coast, as it had when he’d first experienced the bodily traumas. The medications and anti-microbes were a drop in a very, very large bucket.

It was nothing new, now, but he was wearying from it. Not just physically – that ship had long since launched – but mentally. Sleep no longer refreshed him, leaving him snappish, though he was doing his best to monitor himself.

Cee was doing _everything_ she could and he was fully aware of it.

A mean, old thing inside of him wished she had something else to preoccupy her time with. Though he appreciated her, it would have done him some good to languish alone for a while.

He knew it was the fatigue and pain getting to him, the now persistent, _constant_ pain in an arm that was no longer even there. He had the constant impression that his right hand was bunched in a tight grip. It felt as though he’d been holding an Aurelac scalpel for hours, had been digging, harvesting, for cycles.

If he’d been asked to point out where it hurt he would be able to with pinpoint accuracy. He’d be able to trace the exact tendons, the musculature in his hand and forearm. He’d be able to say, _right there, at the wrist, up to the elbow_. In his mind he could flex his hand, could rotate his wrist, but he couldn’t resolve the pain.

Only in the sharpest moments of his pain, that nerve-eating throb, did he feel any negative thing towards Cee. It wouldn’t be accurate to say he felt anger towards her, or blamed her; it was more a thing of directionless grief that lay itself over those unfortunate enough to have been involved.

He’d done this to himself, he knew. He’d made conflict with her father. He’d invaded her pod, intent on stealing it. He’d gotten shot in a turn of Fringe-justice. He’d considered for a moment too long – though it had been brief and almost non-existent – handing her over to hard, crazed people, forcing her hand and dooming his own.

There was no one to blame but himself.

But the pain, this phantom pain – it was hard to reconcile on top of all his other ills. He’d never known a thing like it.

He made hundreds of micro-movements a cycle, trying to engage with a body part that wasn’t there, and it hurt every single time. It didn’t matter what he was attempting to do with the missing appendage - reaching for something, finding balance, stretching, trying to scratch a damn itch – it _all_ hurt.

 _And you got no one to blame but yourself_ , a voice inside him, raised by places like the Green, reminded him.

With shaking legs he got himself into a standing position, a feat with one arm holding a fazer container and the other hurting and absent.

He stepped forward, _didn’t_ fall, though he felt as though he could. He made a slow shuffle towards the galley, well aware of Cee matching pace behind him.

“Don’t gotta be a shadow now, girl.” He _was_ frustrated. Frustrated that he’d put himself and this little girl, this patient young thing, into this very unusual situation. Didn’t mean he needed to snap at her, but he knew she was made of tougher stuff.

She huffed loudly but didn’t say anything. No one could say she wasn’t _patient._ He had no doubt that she wanted to call him stupid, to smack him, but she had clearly found a way to accept his more belligerent moods.

At least for the moment.

He imagined she was glad to see him up and moving, even if he was being stubborn in a way he associated with _her._

He made quick work of it, unceremoniously dumping the entire thing – container and all – in the vacc-slot. It would get crushed and jettisoned. It had been a relatively easy task, but it had left him drained. If he’d any sense, he would have let Cee deal with it.

He leaned against the galley table, turned to look at her.

She was standing several paces away, arms crossed. She looked incredibly unimpressed.

“Spit it out, birdie.”

“You should lay back down.” Was all she said before turning and heading back to the sleeping quarters. He had wanted some space and she was giving it to him.

He used the time to gather his strength, and then shuffled slowly back, hand gripping anything that would support him.

Ezra made it back to his bunk, settled in with a crash, knees giving out just enough to make it uncomfortable. Cee glanced up at him and then back down at her notebook.

“I know.” Ezra said, despite her silence; it would have to suffice, for now.

* * *

Ezra was used to being alone.

She couldn’t think of any other explanation for him making the physical effort to dispose of his own sick in the galley, and for wandering away like a dying thing when she could _help_ him.

Cee startled out of a restless sleep to find Ezra missing from his bunk.

For a moment she stared into the dark, unsure if she was seeing what she _thought_ she was seeing – she was, after all, terribly tired - or whether her companion had truly gone missing.

Then a light from a chance rotation shone in – yes, Ezra was gone - and she leapt from her own bedding.

The craft was small. It didn’t take her long to locate him and he hadn’t gone very far to begin with. He was right there, just outside the bunk’s entrance – fifteen paces - next to the entrance of the refresher.

He was sat there on the cold ground, back to the ribbed framing, one leg bent at the knee and the other stretched out in front of him. If he hadn’t looked so terrible, he’d have looked as though he were resting, albeit in an odd place.

“Ezra.” She said in a low voice, an almost whisper, as though she were afraid to startle him.

“Hmmm?” It seemed a wholly inadequate response. It was that of someone who thought it completely natural and expected to be found just _laying_ there on the floor. He didn’t even open his eyes.

“What are you doing?” Cee didn’t trust that he hadn’t wandered off in some form of delirium, but she couldn’t tell yet. She was angry at herself for not having noticed; how hadn’t she heard? It wasn’t as though he were _graceful._

“Hn.” He grunted. A very unsatisfying answer and not at all comforting.

“Hey.” She put a bit more force into it as she lowered herself to his level in a squat. She’d _never_ be able to pick up his dead weight. She lightly tapped his right foot. “Wake up.”

“M awake.” Ezra said in an indignant, short grunt.

“What are you doing?”

“Refresher.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. His eyes stayed shut.

“What.” She wasn’t satisfied by the answer. She wasn’t even sure if it was a sensical, lucid one.

“Had to use the refresher.” She could just make out the hint of a wheeze in his breathing.

“You should’ve woken me.”

He huffed a wheezy laugh; it made her feel as if though she didn’t know any better. She was _trying_.

“ _No._ Gotta keep _some_ of - of my dignity intact … you know.” Is _that_ why he’d done the same earlier? She felt incredibly irritated by the idea.

“That’s stupid.” Given the circumstances it _was_ stupid, and she’d stand her ground should he challenge her.

Laid there, sprawled, sick, stubborn, he was reminding her of her father. Her father would do something stupid, reckless, or just plain nonsensical and say, _you wouldn’t understand_ , or, _you’ll get it when you’re older,_ or, the worst, _it’s a guy thing_ , _Cee,_ as if she weren’t capable of the same.

What if he’d hit his head? What if he’d aggravated the wound, the foam, and bled out?

It made her miss the company of a mother she never really knew.

“Hnn.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you’re out here. On the ground.”

He sighed as though he were being asked the most irritating questions in all the Black, as if she were a fool for asking at all. And finally he opened his eyes, looked her up and down, fixed her with an exhausted stare.

“Got tired.”

“Which is why you should’ve woken me.”

“Shh. It is what it is, girl.” He finished with a wet cough. _Girl._ It was his own way of lashing out, she knew; a jab, a riposte that said, _leave me be._ He’d pulled the same thing earlier and she’d heard him loud and clear.

“Fine.”

A pause. He blinked, once, twice, and the let his eyes fall shut. He seemed very okay with the whole ordeal. She swallowed, looked around for a second, as if help could be found.

“We just gonna sit here, then?” If he was going to be like _this_ she wanted to know what his stupid plan was.

“Mmhmm. Gettin’ t’ know the floor, ‘s all I’m doin’.” His speech was lazy, and his strange accent was thicker than ever. She wondered where he was from; was he, had he been a Floater? Was he from the Fringe or somewhere like Euphrate?

“Okay.” Cee didn’t know what else to say. For the second time that night, didn’t really know what to do.

So, she scooted next to him, her own back against the wall – it wasn’t _at all_ comfortable – and sat beside him on his left side. She didn’t want to risk inadvertently hurting his right side and with a small feeling of dread, she realized neither of them had visualized the site of amputation since she’d performed it.

He didn’t react to her presence, but she didn’t think he was asleep. She could feel an unhealthy warmth radiating from him, feel when his breath hitched, even if slightly.

She observed him from her periphery, afraid he’d open his eyes to her scrutiny.

She couldn’t tell where he was from just by looking. He didn’t bare any particular fashion of culture; no visible tattoos, no adornments that would align him with a particular sector or belief system. The clothes he wore were plain, but that wasn’t particularly telling; they were just what he’d been wearing under his prospecting suit and were common of style for those in the Black.

He hadn’t made any particular remarks that would help her trace his lineage, no turns of phrase that stuck out as being particularly specific to a people or place. Though, she knew it was probably for the best to leave his way of speaking un-analyzed for it was, generally, very odd. The only thing left, in that regard, was his accent. She’d never heard it before so it was wholly useless.

It sure wasn’t the kind of accent she expected of a being engaged in _academics_ , brief or otherwise, though she figured – with no small annoyance and complete with a feeling of personal devastation over being an ‘uneducated Floater’ - that maybe she just didn’t know anything about it. She was still turning _that_ over in her head. Over the past cycles she’d catch him in quiet moments, doing nothing in particular, and think, _literature?_

There was, of course, what she understood of his personality, all learned in moments; shown rather than said. A decentness one wouldn’t expect. Someone who rather conversate their way out of a heap than shoot, though capable of the latter. A pragmatism that was, at worst: cold and calculated, and, at best: level-headed and just.

Of course, she had what he had personally told her – all true, she believed – and what she could see. A scruffed face, that scar he’d said he’d got killing someone, that frustrating spot of blonde in his hair.

But.

Did he have _family_? Did he have a _nybody_ worth calling on _?_ Did he have a _home,_ planet or moon-side? Where did he _go_ when he wasn’t in the Green?

She was filled with the sudden, flash-fire curiosity of a being that hungered for a wisdom that they knew to be slipping away. A morbid piece of her wondered what it would be like to lose someone she knew so little about.

She _would_ miss him. Terribly, she realized.

She stuffed the thought down before it could grow. Before her eyes could get hot. He _wasn’t_ going to die, she reasoned with herself. He’d been able to get up on his own, hadn’t fallen, had used the refresher. He was talking to her, though he seemed his own version of a little ornery.

He was _fine_. He just had to recover, needed more time, more rest.

“Hey.” She murmured low. He didn’t respond so she gave him a gentle shove, not even enough to jostle him.

“Hey …” He didn’t startle. He just opened his eyes, stared into the dark, and then turned his head enough to look at her.

“Hmm. What. Okay?” He was asking her if everything were ok, if she was _okay._

“Yeah. Just.” She stopped. He didn’t look up for conversation. But, he’d put himself here, on the floor, so she didn’t really care.

“Where are you going to go? When we land.” Cee had the strangest impression that her voice was getting lost in the dark; it felt weak, half formed. It felt wrapped in vulnerable things she couldn’t name.

Where was _she_ going to go?

Ezra was kind enough to look as though he were thinking about it; a small upturn of his lips and he huffed, coughed lowly.

“A medical center, I hope … though … though I could use a drink.” He laughed and it sounded a little delirious. It was better than something pained, she guessed. Still, she had been hoping for something more.

“That’s not what I meant.” She really wasn’t in the mood for his version of humor, the kind that completely ignored his own peril and circumstances.

“I’m sure _you_ could … use a drink …” He gave her a knowing, tired look; it was a look of complete awareness of the multiple burdens she’d been forced to bear, all before her time. She didn’t _appreciate_ it. She could deal with it fine. She had been dealing with all this just _fine._

“Never mind.” She rolled her eyes, turned her gaze away. She’d happily sit here, in silence, in the dark if they weren’t going to talk about anything that mattered.

Beside her, Ezra sighed.

“After we land …” He breathed in, breath catching on the exhale. His arm shifted to brace his abdomen, though he didn’t look too pained, at the moment. She moved slightly to allow him the room, shoulder to shoulder as they were.

“Not sure, little bird. If I’m being … truly candid, I - I wasn’t expecting to – to be coming back one armed.”

She fell silent, listened, even as an invisible knife twisted in her gut.

“Thought, maybe … richer. But, weak handed … ‘nd only so? Mmm mmm.” He shook his head in a negative, just as he had when he’d told her that she wouldn’t be able to appeal to the sympathies of mercenaries; certain, convincing.

“Not easy prospectin’ only … weak handed.” He said it as though it were fact; how he _felt_ about it wasn’t evident, but she was no fool. And, she knew it to be true. Cee had seen him fail multiple times over, though under immense pressure. He’d managed to extract the husk from the soil but hadn’t managed to preserve the gem.

She hadn’t managed either, two-handed. She hadn’t been able to feel the difference between membrane and husk. She hadn’t felt any indication under the blade that she’d been nearing it. Her father had always told her there was something to be felt, when close – whatever it was, she hadn’t sensed it.

“Took years t’ learn it well. M’ whole life. For that matter.”

He didn’t say more on the matter, and it didn’t seem he would.

He had _no clue_ what he was going to do, she realized.

For a moment, now uncountable amongst others, she felt guilt over her part in the loss of the appendage. He wasn’t assigning her any blame via his words. He was saying as it was. It didn’t mean she could so easily excuse her part in it, even if it had truly been a thing of self-defense. Acting in the unwritten law of the Green.

“What’ll _you_ do, birdie?” There was something sad built into the question, as though he too understood that she hadn’t much in the way of options, that her father was dead and with him went a lot of her own agency. Now, she was just another nameless, parentless thing floating in the Black.

There were thousands upon thousands like her.

She felt a small stir of disappointment over the return of her question. They would part ways, she realized.

“I don’t know.” The thought filled her with a sense of unease. She’d been so glad to reach the Towline, had been so distracted by Ezra’s condition, that she hadn’t really spared it much thought.

How _stupid._

Ezra waited for her to continue; she could feel him looking at her in the dark. Despite the fever brightness of his eyes, the clear longing to close them and to rest, he watched and waited.

“My father, we took the job because we were low on points. I don’t know how low. Really low, I think.”

They had to have been, she realized in retrospect. He had hardly supplied them with enough food for the trip. He had rented a bum-pod. He had taken a job from _mercenaries_.

She felt as though she were looking at her own self through a tunnel. As though she were looking back into a long stretcher of time, gazing at a version of herself that was so much younger, naiver _._ How hadn’t she noticed how poorly they’d been?

“I don’t know how to access them.” She said as an afterthought. She _didn’t_. She knew, at the very least, that their transit was paid for, a deal made in full before the journey. She also knew they hadn’t enough to make requests for anything but the drop; no technical assistance, no supply replenishment, _nothing._

Beside her Ezra sighed and she felt, for a moment, as though she could hear his thoughts.

He’d been clear about how he felt about partners keeping partners in the dark. What he couldn’t understand, she knew, was that Damon had always been her father _first_ when it came to those matters – points, jobs, dealings – and, inversely, a father _second_ on a job. The two never balanced, never aligned, never were allowed to become fully one and the other. It left her with holes in their relationship. Holes that could never be filled.

“I’ve got a bit, cased away snug. Not much. But somethin’.”

That was good, she guessed. He could at the very least pay for medical support. Or at least he hoped. She didn’t really know of what means Ezra was.

“You got somethin’ for writing?” He said, startling her with the randomness of it.

“Why?”

“Need y’ t’take somethin’ down. Got an account.” It took her a beat to understand what he was saying, implying.

“I don’t need help.” She was quietly mortified over the possibility that he had read her as a beggar, that she’d opened up to implore help.

“Didn’t say y’ did.” He hadn’t.

“You’ll need it.” She argued; he _would_. She doubted he could afford a prosthetic limb, but she doubted he was thinking that far ahead. He needed to survive, first. He needed those points to do that.

“We both will.” His response was sharp, tired of their arguing over something small. “Figure I owe you some … anyhow.”

He groaned in annoyance before she even said anything, must have seen it in the way she vigorously shook her head, spoke:

“You don’t owe me anything. You said so yourself, it’s just how it is in the Black.” She repeated his words, a concept he had expressed multiple times over the past cycles, over various contexts.

She knew that _he_ knew better. That _he_ knew sometimes beings were made orphans. Sometimes beings lost an arm. She wasn’t _special._

“I _want_ you to – to have some. That work?” Ezra coughed, his tone taking on a frustrated bite; it was aggravating his lungs, no doubt, but the fight hadn’t drained from him yet.

“Give it to somebody else.” Cee said it in a way that surprised herself. It had a meanness to it, as if she were asking to be unclaimed.

“There _is_ no one else.” _Alone._ That answered at least one of her many questions, though, for the moment, she wasn’t interested.

She didn’t _want_ his points, or some of them, or whatever he was offering. She didn’t want his _pity,_ especially since he was going to _make it_ and this would all be very awkward when he changed his mind.

 _A loner_ , she thought. Trying to give her something, as though she were a debt to be paid, so he could disappear and rid himself of her.

“I don’t _need_ it.”

“You do. Stop this stubbornness, birdie - ain’t gotta make somethin’ of it.” Ezra stared back at her with so much intensity, such intention, that she’d felt no choice but to back off.

He’d taken the same tone with her as he’d taken with the mercenary, Mikken, when he’d told him there was no resolution but to allow them passage. It was a tone that suggested they were on the tender line of conflict.

“You gotta … take the good cards when they land, too.” He coughed in a way that sounded painful, held his chest, breathed through it.

She snapped her mouth shut, relenting. He was right. He _was._

And, he was trying to make it easier for the both of them. Whether he wanted to make things right by his own measurements and count, or whether he was just in a giving mood, she knew it unwise to reject the offer.

She had become so good at taking all of the Blacks poor dealings that she’d forgotten how to take the good.

It was a lesson, to be certain, but not one that felt particularly enjoyable.

Ezra made a quick motion with his head – _get along, go -_ and she got up. She crossed the short space from refresher to bunk, grabbed her notebook and returned to his side. If her footfalls were a little heavier than they needed to be, Ezra didn’t comment.

She cleared her throat, looked at him expectantly.

She waited; pen balanced over page.

“Ok.” Cee said, wanting this done with.

He cleared his throat and rattled off a fifteen-number sequence. She knew any terminal would accept the code. It felt odd to know Ezra’s and not her own father’s, her’s. Then he gave her a second number; she recognized it for what it was – a Fringe account, or the closest approximation, for account wasn’t quite the right word.

A tool of fringe _economy_ was more apt.

“Got it?” He said, he winced over some unseen pain. “Read it back.”

She did and he nodded.

“Alright then.”

Ezra shivered after that. Cee guessed the cold of the floor was getting to him. Whatever had been soothing about it had likely long passed. Luckily, he had the same idea, wasn’t taken by too much fatigue or stubbornness to realize it.

Their craft shuddered, bare-boned material groaning as the Tower made a course change sending shudders through the entire infrastructure, into every individual pod and craft; Cee’s heart soared in the barest manner.

They were close.

Ezra’s shoulders seemed to collapse as he huffed in what she thought may be his own expression of relief.

“Suspect we should relocate.” Which was Ezra-speak – Cee knew – for, _help me off the damn floor._

She grabbed his arm and, together, they leveraged themselves up for the slow walk to the bunk.

* * *

**ETA: One-point-five-standard-cycles.**

Cee checked in with the Tower. They were on track, hadn’t lost time to mechanical delays or unexpected debris in orbit.

 _Copy_ , she’d said, and almost left it at that.

Then, in a moment of vulnerability, in desperation, she told the person on the other end of the comm that her travel companion – that Ezra - was injured, ill. They responded with the ETA, again, and nothing more.

She shuffled back to the bunk, her own copy of _The Streamer Girl_ in hand. She had tried to add to it while he slept but she hadn’t put a single word on paper.

She hadn’t been gone long, had left him sleeping, but now he was awake, laying on his back; he was coughing lightly, hand on his chest. It had developed into a near constant since they’d returned to the bunk.

She wondered what he was thinking about considering he had nothing to keep him entertained.

She sat on the floor at the end of his bunk, within his line of sight.

“I was thinking of visiting Kamrea.” She said, chin held high. She had thought it over while he’d been sleeping. She’d always wanted to, despite her father laughing it off, telling her that she couldn’t even _say_ it correctly, so, why would she even want to _go?_

“You could come, too.” She looked down at her tattered notebook. Her fingers pulled at a tear in one of the pages.

“Sounds like … a decent plan. Could use some … warmer weather.” He was shaking. The length of his periods of wakefulness were growing smaller, thinner.

She hadn’t known Kamrea was warm.

* * *

Cee didn’t know when to cut her losses.

She’d made the same mistake _twice_ now, saving his life or, at least, trying to. She’d unknowingly made it so much worse for herself.

She did _not deserve this_. The thought repeated itself over and over again, interspersed with confusing images of the Green. Of the faces of people who tried to kill him. Of bloody wounds.

She didn’t deserve to watch the pathetic death throes of some stranger in the Black, trapped in a gutted craft. _Poor girl,_ he thought through the impossible chill.

They’d gotten back to the bunk with no particular difficulty, nothing far from their current norm, and had fallen into an unhealthy sleep. He awoke, at times, to feverish hot and biting chill.

He knew, distanced from self but still present, that he really was doing his best to fever-shake himself straight out of his bunk and onto the floor. He was at least grateful that they’d been bolted so low; it wouldn’t be a terrible tumble.

He wrapped his arm around his midsection, turned on his side, tried to simultaneously rid himself of the cloths covering him and bury himself deeper within them.

 _This is what fate means: to be opposite, to be opposite and nothing else, forever._ A spate of Rilknian floated through, surprising him; he’d forgotten _most_ of it. Had a difficult time recalling it these days.

And then, _is that how it was with my father?_

And, _wake up, please, listen to me_ – something heard, something remembered, but not experienced in pure lucidity.

His thoughts were scattered and lost to fever, he realized. He could feel the burn of heat-confusion. He was still alert enough to understand he was feverish – though he couldn’t know how long _that_ would last – and that he was towing the line of lucid and delirious.

The knowledge made the experience no less tortuous.

Latently, he knew Cee had been speaking to him, at some point, and that he hadn’t answered in any way that would be considered satisfactory. He was aware that she still was saying something _now_ , but breaking the surface of this violent fog was _difficult._

 _This has reached its almighty conclusion_ , he thought.

She’d done what she could – far more than she _should_ have – and it was time to go.

“Ezra.” Insistent, her voice shone through, for the moment. He grunted in acknowledgment, though it sounded, to his ears, like a whine. A sad attempt at, _I’m still here._

He swallowed past the dryness in his throat and that unrelenting metallic taste.

He latched onto the moment of lucidity like a man who knew it was his last chance.

“Cee.” He knew without needing to look, or comprehend his surroundings that she was listening. He cracked his eyes open, found what he thought was her gaze – a blurred shape with a blonde mop of unruliness – and spoke.

“You should … see if – if Tower will let you hu-hunker,” He couldn’t stop _shaking_ ,” - down with them –“

He coughed and for the first time could really taste it; the blood in his mouth.

“ - for the remainder … of, of this trip.”

Even fevered he knew that it was a longshot; the Tower was very intentionally difficult to access from a pod. One could access the empty internal structures that connected the pods, but it was only with effort and permission that one could actually interact with another living being face to face. Very, very few pod-ers and even fewer personnel in the Tower were amenable to it.

“What?” Her voice warbled through his dulled senses. He breathed in.

“Get them on the comms,” It was so hard to breath, the metallic taste catching in his throat, the way his chest hitched, as if it didn’t want to rise and fall anymore, “they …. they might bargain.”

She could. He’d given her access to the meager points he had. She could use what was left in the Fringe to get them to help her, facilitate her landing and connect her to safety. Then she could use what was left in the account – clean and legal – to get herself to Kamrea.

To wherever she wanted.

He would have liked to express all of that, to ensure she understood the plan, but he couldn’t gather the words. Couldn’t gather the breath. He could feel the thoughts slipping away until he forgot them all together.

All that was left was the lingering impression of something _important_ left unsaid.

Still. Even sick as he was, he knew what he was saying even if the content fled him with startling swiftness. He didn’t want her misconstruing his lucid words for fever talk.

“Why? What do you mean ...” She sounded both confused and knowing. _Damn,_ he thought as he was taken but another wave of chills, _if she weren’t trying to make this difficult._

“You’ve done … done enough, birdie. ‘S time to fly.” He meant it, even though it hurt to say. It hurt in a way things hadn’t for a long time. It was the hurt, he realized, one felt when failing someone they cared about.

Long time indeed.

“Y’ gotta go.” She could skip now, while he was still talking. She could leave with decent memories. He felt an uncomfortable sense of urgency. _Go, go, go –_ he wanted to shout at her.

He could curse the stubbornness of children.

“I mean it ... Cee.” _Please go, spare yourself this unpleasantness._

And it had been nothing but since they met.

Unpleasantness.

Though, even he, dying as he was, knew it to be a false narrative, all meant to trick his own mind into letting go.

The companionship had been nice, though he would never have imagined enjoying the company of a child, let alone such a hardened one. Her stories had been interesting and full of wonder. Her expressions reminded him of things fresh and growing, blossoming into new life.

“Shut up. Just, shut up.” She had said that a lot in their time together. He knew it was a matter that extended beyond his long-windedness, that he had, on multiple occasions, spoken out of turn, upon subjects she wanted to leave laying.

“Cee –“ She had tossed something, her notebook, perhaps.

“I’m not leaving you.” She yelled it, she was panting.

Even with his vision half-blurred, she looked miserably affronted, angry. He could see that her brows were drawn up in angry disbelief. She shifted her jaw, a tic, as if intending to lash out at him with the meanest words she could imagine.

“Don’t tell me to do that again.” He wouldn’t. He doubted he’d be _able_ to and would have to settle on hoping she’d figure out that it was the right move. To be somewhere else.

“I’ll make my own decisions about what _I_ do.” She was giving him a thorough lashing on his death bed. _Good job, girl,_ he thought; he knew she’d be fine out there in the Black, once this was all done.

He felt himself drifting again. Time and space were slipping, just like that, through his hands.

“You hear me, Ezra?”

He did.

He had to.

He relented.

“I hear you … little bird.”

* * *

It would be the last lucid thing Ezra would say to her.

* * *

 **ETA: Point-five-standard-cycles**

The Tower would not bargain.

She had asked, begged, for intervention. She had offered agreeable solutions to her problem and each one - expedited transfer, earlier drop placement (they were standing at 40/61), a Towline-wide medical personnel request, medical supplies - had been ignored.

They hadn’t been interested in her – Ezra’s - points.

They hadn’t been interested in anything she’d said. A sick man in one of their tow-crafts.

They were already paid in full.

They were no one.

“Small-craft 2742, ETA, point-five-standard-cycles.” The Tower closed the conversation. She slammed a fist on the button, closing the communication.

Her chest was heaving, a thing of anger and panic.

She began to cry.

* * *

Ezra was dying.

He’d taken a sharp and sudden turn for the worse as the cycle had continued on. The decline had been so startling that she hadn’t believed it to be happening.

He’d _spoken_ to her not too long ago. He’d been impossibly stubborn two cycles, less, back. He’d had color to his skin, had recognition in his gaze.

Then, he’d grown unusually pale. She thought she’d seen the extent to his pallor, but had been proven wrong when he’d gone nearly _grey_.

Ezra had started having serious trouble breathing, could only tolerate sitting up. It hadn’t been like before, when he could talk in broken sentences. Suddenly, he hadn’t been able to talk _at all._ Even fevered she could see the animal-panic in his eyes.

Then the blood had come, staining his hand as he’d coughed into it, staining his teeth.

He had drifted into unconsciousness, wheezing, panting. He became delirious, shifting in weak, aimless movements. The words he could form seemed random, out of place.

Whereas before he’d been responsive to verbal and physical nudging, now he was ignorant to all her attempts to revive him.

No more could her own childish denial challenge the facts.

No more could it distract from the evidence so clear and plain before her.

No more could her administrations help. No amount of coolant-frosted-rags could quiet the fever. No amount of begging coercion could get the man to drink or eat or take the anti-microbes.

Ezra was _dying_.

Worse, he’d been telling her, she realized in the quiet of the craft – he’d known.

He’d told her to take his points. He’d told her to _fly_ , to go away so she wouldn’t have to … to witness this.

A still-child part of her wished she had taken his advice, though she knew she _never_ would have truly acted on it. She wouldn’t have been able to live with herself, she knew.

Cee felt herself sinking. Sinking right into the floor of the sleeping quarters. She couldn’t feel anything, and yet, she could feel it all. Fear latched on to her in a way she’d only known once before – when she’d seen her father fall back, violently, suddenly.

She felt as though she were watching _herself_ , numb as she was.

She was watching herself kneeling next to Ezra’s bunk. Watching herself track Ezra’s chest rise and fall in stuttering, hardly there breaths. Watching herself strain to hear the crackling wheeze of each breath. Watching herself cry.

She could feel the heat on her cheeks, and yet, she could not.

She wondered if she were going mad, like many before her on desolate shuttles in the Black.

She squeezed her hands, grounding herself on the still living flesh beneath them.

Both her hands were wrapped around Ezra’s one, her head leaned against the edge of his bunk. Her neck hurt from the positioning, from gazing up at his face, from watching his breathing. Her eyes were tired from crying, tired from lack of sleep. Her back and rear hurt from sitting for so long on that hard floor.

She sniffed, anxiety welling up with each breath.

“Please, please, please …” She whispered through crying induced congestion. She was hardly aware that she was doing that – speaking to him. It had come naturally, and, once she’d started, she couldn’t stop. The space had felt too empty and quiet; it had felt replete of life.

With every hitch of his breath something inside her broke, left her exhausted. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take.

Then.

An out of place tone, a jingle.

Tower.

_Small-craft-2742 you are cleared for release._

Cee felt herself freeze; she tried to get her panting breaths, her hyperventilating under controlled.

They’d _made it._

She looked at Ezra; he was still alive. His chest hitched up and down, his head lolled in a barely there movement. He was _still alive._

She had to go.

Cee squeezed his hand, tight and desperate.

“Ezra, we made it.” She said, her voice cracked and warbling with the grief that had wracked her body, the fear.

“I’ve got to go. I’ve got to –“ It felt like she was saying goodbye; she was too terrified to _move._

“Please, I’ll be _right_ back. I promise. I’ll be right back. Don’t … just stay there.”

She squeezed his hand again, held it to her forehead, for just a moment – it hurt, hurt in her chest and throat, and she couldn’t swallow, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe - and let go.

She sprinted towards the comm. Every moment away from his side felt like she was reducing him to a death sentence. Her heart was hammering in her chest.

She landed in the command seat, back of one hand wiping away the too hot tears on her face, the other switching the comm into the open position.

“I’m here. Small-craft 2742, ready for release.” She was tapping her foot in an anxious beat against the ground.

A moment.

“Copy.”

A groan of para-steel, the shudder of minute movements, and then silence.

Cee watched as the Towline suddenly pulled away from them.

They were dropping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An apology: I thought it would be two parts; I am so sorry.
> 
> Two opinions: Prospect, the film, is whump-fanfiction for characters we had never even met prior to viewing. Also, Ezra is from Space Texas – like, listen to the way he says ‘that’s 100, 130 V right there’ in that scene when they’re talking about stripping the craft. Who is he if not some cattle-ranch owner from San Antonio? As a New Orleanian, I’m calling Space Texan and I’ll die on that hill.
> 
> Notes on Music: In case anyone was wondering, Pasaulīte by Žoržs Siksna is the song used in the movie and in the scene where Cee wakes Ezra after the excision. The part that is used in the scene in which they cut Ezra off while investigating the death of Mikken starts at ~02:38. I actually like it quite a bit, it’s kind of a banger; any opinions expressed are Cee’s and Ezra’s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iYbFkXPTkU
> 
> Notes on emergency medicine™: fun fact, the way Cee tries to wake Ezra is exactly how we try to wake patients who have fainted and won’t wake up (though, smelling salts are better), refuse to act wakeful (yes, refuse, as in playing possum), or whom are on drug/narcan comedowns and unresponsive to sternum rubs. Nothing says wake up and get out of my ER like the overhead examination light, the strobe setting of a flashlight, and loud, annoying music. I’m definitely adding Pasaulīte to my repertoire. 
> 
> Notes on Ezra’s condition: I tried to figure out wtf would be wrong with our boy and settled on noncardiogenic pulmonary edema caused by toxic exposure to the ‘dust’, and what is essentially septicemia. Plus, blood loss, obviously, so multiple shock pathologies. The way he acted in the film had a septic/pulmonary edema vibe, but the medicine in Prospect is obviously pretty potent given that miraculous turnaround he had. In our universe I think he would’ve died in this story. Sci-fi, am I right!?
> 
> Notes on the rock-hopper craft: I don’t know how big that ship was supposed to be; I couldn’t see much of it in the movie. It was called a ship/craft and not a pod, so I assumed it was a bit bigger. I probably made it a bit bigger than it was, but it is still supposed to be a very small craft. Think studio apartment/flat with a bathroom and bedroom area that someone cordoned off with really shitty dry-wall or rice-paper doors, only, you know, the space equivalent.
> 
> Notes on space capitalism/economy: these people seem to be operating on a point system? I have no clue. I just went with whatever they were talking about in the film. Points may actually mean something else, but I’m taking it as a form of economy we would recognize as hard, dirty cash. Or a space credit card. Who knows.
> 
> Notes on dying: I’m sure you’re all aware. Watching someone die isn’t fun™ or easy®.
> 
> A/N: Until next time, loves. I have another week of shifts but imagine I’ll be doing some writing. It is what keeps me sane. Thank you very much for your support and reviews. They fill my heart with inspiration and make me wish to write all the faster. You are appreciated reviewers, kudo-ers, readers, skimmers, rebloggers, Tumblrites, and all that lie in-between.


	3. PART III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ezra was the same.

Cee had no choice but to endure the landing.

It had always been her father at the controls, aiming them towards spots on soil and tarmac that rushed far too quickly through the viewfinder.

She had always hated the turbulence of atmosphere; they’d never had anything more luxurious than a rented pod, slowed by parachutes and reverse thrusters, taken easily by a turn of bad weather.

She’d never known the comfort of both a smooth drop _and_ clean landing.

Flames had always licked at their windows, as if to threaten, as if to remind that they were beings dependent on a gravity-bound life. Equipment always failed or threaten to do so, bits and pieces sparking, smoking, breaking away.

They’d been stranded once before – her and her father – but she’d been younger, more believing in her father when he’d said, _it’s not that big of a deal, Cee, its inhabited._

Now it was up to Cee to deliver herself and Ezra to safety; it was the last thing she had any control over.

The coordinates had been pre-programmed by Tower, the landing more carefully guided than a drop to the Green Moon; it would be a horrible liability to allow pods to choose their drop locations within any major Central landing-port.

Still, it required _some_ hand-on-controls, at least for any models – rock hoppers, pods, no-thrusts, and micro-crafts - lashed to the Towline they’d formerly been attached to. Their BG-Towline had been of the lowest tier; the slowest, the most prone to course-correction and delays, and that which boasted the more pastoral landing sites.

Crafts like theirs were liable to fall off course and that wouldn’t do in areas of urbanity.

She wished, latently, that they’d had a proper ship. The autonomy would have afforded them far more choice, far more expedience.

They hit atmosphere and the craft quaked. It was different than a pod; _bare bones_ , the mercenary had said. She felt _every_ bit of it. The para-steel sound like it was moments from tearing itself apart.

Her hands hovered over the land-sequence cluster.

She and Ezra had only gone over the controls briefly.

Now, she was glad they’d done so; at the time, _after_ he’d discovered the craft came with musical accompaniment, she’d thought it vaguely unnecessary, not as important as cataloguing their supplies, checking the field kit.

She had fully assumed he would be the one to make the landing.

She hadn’t _realized._

It was a thing trained into her by her father: the expectation that _he_ would deal with things like the craft, the planning, the _points_ , and that _she_ didn’t need to know, that she would keep track of time, the minutia, supply maintenance.

She hadn’t realized it fully, until now, how unprepared she had been for any of the ventures her father had decided upon for the both of them. She had always persevered, had always _delivered_ , but she had never really _known_ anything beforehand.

Now she appreciated Ezra’s attention to detail.

Ezra had been quick about it, tired and drained as he’d been. He seemed bent on modeling his belief that partners needed equitable content and quality of knowledge.

 _Back-thrust. Baas convertor._ _Gel-cooler._ Ezra had pointed it all out, left hand moving over the controls swiftly but intentionally. _Parachute. Airbrakes. Propulsion._

She remembered most of it, could hear his voice in her head when she looked at the controls, the buttons, the switches; some, a few, were lost to memory but she imagined they must have been irrelevant or completely alien to her, at the time.

The altimeter blared a stale warning, a single tone that would have been easy to miss. Her hand found the parachute deployment switch; she flipped it and the craft jolted.

Cee was surprised by how quickly it had released.

The force of the sudden _drag_ pushed her deeper into the chair; the craft shuttered and groaned. For one terrifying moment she closed her eyes, certain the rigging would snap, releasing them from their most meaningful form of deceleration.

It held.

She quickly switched her attention to the viewfinder.

The hazy glow of the viewfinder made it hard to differentiate the smaller details of the land below the craft. She could see their designated landing zone clear enough – a square parcel of tarmac surrounded by flattened shrub – but with every small movement the ship made, the line blurred, just a bit.

If she didn’t pay fine enough attention she may land on the _wrong_ tarmac. It was easy work, as long as one focused. She just had to hold the control stick in the orientation set by the coordinates, push the thruster paddle when a certain button turned red, warning her if descent was too rapid.

It never activated.

All she had to do was hold steady, keep the crosshairs on the illuminated center of the viewfinder. It was very possible that she hadn’t needed to stay in the command seat, but she wasn’t about to take any undue risks.

The altimeter scrolled furiously; 2000m, 1500m, 1090m …

Automated thrusters came on with a too-loud _hiss …_

The landing was less jarring than the one she’d experience on the Green.

This time they hadn’t burnt out the gel and she’d been _looking_ ; the craft settled with a _thump_ , and it was over.

She could hear some errant ticking as the control panel shut itself down, the occasional _whoosh_ of exhaust ports decompressing.

But it was over. The craft was on the terra firma of Central.

Cee sat, panting over the controls.

Her overstimulated mind couldn’t help but latch on to the strangeness of seeing flat terrain and the far-off skyline of a _city,_ of rows of maize-crop that gave away to the suddenness of monolithic buildings.

It had been a long time since she and her father had been on a Central planet, let alone _Central_ itself.

Outside the shuttle a singular, rapidly blinking yellow light caught her attention. A distress signal; their craft had been tagged as needing tarmac-side assistance.

It was the only kindness Tower had done them.

The shock, the _elation_ , the terror over having landed, having finally reached the destination released her and she pulled at the lever that would open the entry-hatch. As soon as she could hear the far-off click of shifting pieces, the hiss of hydraulics, she was racing back to the sleeping quarters.

It took the barest moment of time, so small was the craft, but she was somehow afforded an infinite interval to worry. All in that singular trice, she wondered how he’d born the landing, if he were still breathing, if he’d woken, if he’d mounted a miraculous recovery.

She felt fear and hope and grief all within a physical space no longer than fifteen thrower’s laid stock to barrel’s end.

Cee made it to his side, knees hitting floor in a way that would hurt later.

She found the man much in the same state as she’d left him. He hadn’t moved, not so much that she would have noticed, though she imagined he had been jostled by the drop and the landing.

“Ezra.” She tried, gripping his hand – hot, clammy. She hoped against all the evidence presented to her that he might rouse.

“We made it.”

Ezra continued to lay there, limp and sweat laden, hardly breathing. But he _was_ breathing; she put one of her hands on his chest again, was able to feel it moving up and down, albeit not in a way that she would have deemed sufficient or healthy.

“We made it. You’re going to be okay.” Anyone who had been listening would have interpreted it as a plea rather than a promise.

But _it_ was there. The only a discernable change in his condition: a new, startling, blue tinge to his lips.

She _knew_ that was bad.

 _But_ , she thought, her own breathing becoming unstable in a fit of exhaustion and emotion, _we made it. We made it, so you have to **try**._

“Incoming.”

Cee startled at the sudden intrusion, her breath catching in her throat. Someone was shouting up at her, them, from the hatch’s entrance. She could hear their footfalls – unrushed, intentional – as they crossed the craft.

She dearly hoped it was some form of medical relief.

A moment later and Cee found herself rising, voice cracking, as they appeared: help, finally.

“He’s hurt –“ She stuttered aware of the inadequacy of the statement, as she moved out of the way; the woman, tall, wearing a blue jumpsuit, glanced at her – so brief it hardly seemed a look at all – and then at her partner.

Her partner: a man, shorter, older-looking but kitted in the same manner, followed closely after her. He put his arm on Cee’s shoulder, moving her slightly out of the way.

“’Scuse me.” Was all he said, casual-like, without looking at her.

Cee found herself flinching at the touch. It had felt both invasive and dismissive.

“Another one, huh?” He said as he unclipped items from his belt-pack. He looked at Ezra with the same detached gaze his partner afforded their new patient.

“Looks like it.” The woman said as she put her own kit down and knelt next to Ezra. She didn’t even look back at Cee.

“Right arm field amputation,” the woman said, her voice clinical, her eyes roving over Ezra’s unresponsive figure, “upper abdominal wound. Hey, buddy. Can you hear me?”

She all but shouted at Ezra. It felt horribly loud in the small space.

He didn’t so much as twitch.

“What’s his name?” The woman asked it as though it were an errant thought. As though she had only just remembered the man dying before them might have a name.

“Ezra.” Cee croaked. Even _she_ had only just started calling him by his name.

Then, to Cee’s horror, she roughly raked her knuckles over his sternum. It was far too close to the wound for comfort.

“Hey!” The woman shouted again. “Ezra!”

“Hey, don’t, you’ll hurt him –“ She panicked. It took no small amount of discipline to stay back and away. She felt like a coiled spring. She wanted to leap forward and pull this woman away, to hover over her downed companion and tell them to come back later, when he was awake.

“He’s deep.” The woman said, to her partner.

Cee was surprised by how disinterested this woman sounded.

She knew she shouldn’t have been. Most her interactions in life, with others that weren’t her father, were like this.

Guarded, uninterested, unkind. Uninvested unless something could be gained.

“Prospectors.” The other one said as though it were a bad thing; they’d likely responded to a fair number of prospecting-related incidents. They clearly had opinions regarding the trade.

“Dry-breech?” The woman asked her, looking back at her as she took shears to Ezra’s right, knotted, empty sleeve. Cee wondered if the woman had actually ever _seen_ a dry-breech or if she only knew the term from her experience with dead and dying prospectors.

She asked it at the same time that the man, her partner said:

“Damn kips.” Ezra was _not_ kip. And how _dare_ he; had he ever set foot on the Green?

“No, not a dry-breech. He was shot.” By _me._

The woman grunted in acknowledgment but didn’t say anything. She finished the cuts, pulling the shirt off with ease, revealing Ezra’s bare chest. She tossed the clothing aside like it were – had always been - rags, not something that had once been his.

Neither seemed to care about the correction; Cee felt an anger-fueled edge sharpen inside her.

She wanted to defend Ezra against the judgements of these two strangers. They thought they were dealing with the mistakes of a fresh prospector. They said everything with immense boredom and some disdain, as though he _deserved_ it.

“Stabbed, too.” The man – the one who’d called Ezra kip – said as he touched the area around the foam with gloved hands.

“Infected. I’d wager it.” His voice lifted in a way that Cee didn’t like. As though it was something they _actually_ wagered about. That, later, if he was found to be correct, he’d take _pride_ in it.

“Which happened first?” He was talking to her, Cee realized.

“What?”

“The arm or the stab wound.” He said with a snort, as though he were annoyed by _her_ delaying him, as though it were the most obvious thing in the universe. “Which happened first?”

“Arm. It, he was shot. It festered with dust. I had to remove it.” Cee said clearly, hoping the information would help. That they would do something to indicate what they thought about his condition.

“Unlucky guy.” It was all the man said in response.

He said nothing about the fact that he’d been _shot_ , endured an _amputation_ and then had been _stabbed_. Nothing about the reality that _she_ had been the one to do it. He didn’t know _either_ of them and that was all he could say?

Cee _hated_ him.

The man moved on from his appraisal of the stab wound, placing a single sticker on the left side of his chest, just under his collarbone.

The man pulled a hand-held device from the equipment pack belted to his waist and frowned as Ezra’s vitals transmitted to the instrument.

“Gonna’ put him on some O2.” He said as the machine calibrated; one of the grids was unlit, an unhelpful **‘- -‘** holding the place of important information.

The man reached into his kit, pulled out a mask, pressed the small button that activated the filter, the pressurizer and placed it over Ezra’s nose and mouth. Ezra jerked his head away – the most energy she’d seen from him since they arrived - but the seal stayed intact, stuck to his skin, helping deliver oxygen whilst letting him breathe out.

She could see the condensation from his breaths; it was the only sign of his apparent livelihood.

“How long has he been like this?” The woman finally looked at her, her blue eyes flat and unemotional. She was starting an intravenous line, hands fiddling with tubing that scrolled out of the small square box in her hand.

They – the medics - were both moving with what seemed to be little urgency and it made Cee’s heart flutter, made her feel faint and scared.

 _Help him_ , she wanted to scream, even though they were.

“About a cycle, he - ” Cee was interrupted.

“His pressure is shit.” She looked over at the small machine the other responder was holding. The numbers glowed on the screen: **70/40**. Another number blinked to the beat of a rhythm she couldn’t hear: **131**.

She didn’t know what that meant.

She knew it was something Ezra had been worried about, but she hadn’t fully understood it. She’d never had the opportunity to learn medicine beyond how to use a field kit. Neither she nor her father had ever been so grievously injured. _Anyone_ could use a field kit; the reality of his condition slammed into her.

She hadn’t much chance treating him. She hadn’t a hope.

Whatever care she’d delivered had all been a bare minimum: like taping together two ends of a severed hook-up-hose and expecting it to work in the long-term.

“He’s tachy.” None of it sounded good. “Satting at 86, 87ish.”

Cee swallowed; her throat felt dry.

Her eyes burned but no tears came. It was as though her body knew it needed to pay attention, to watch carefully. It didn’t help her breathing any, though. She felt as though her heart would explode from her chest, that she’d never breathe outside this panicked pace she’d set.

“Unsurprising.” The other said from her position kneeled at Ezra’s side. She was securing the line that disappeared into Ezra’s skin, taping the tubing to his forearm. Then, she started again, starting a second line just above it in the bend of his elbow.

“Toss me the fluid.” Cee watched as the man tossed his partner a bag of fluid. She caught it, connected it to one of the lines in Ezra’s arm, and handed Cee the bag.

“Hold that. High. Higher.” Cee complied even though her arms felt weak; she felt like she was going to throw up.

“Temp 39.5.” The man said as more data uploaded into the device. “Told ya. Probably from that dust, nasty shit.”

“A full cycle? He’s lucky he didn’t bottom out.”

“Stimulants, probably. All the kits got ‘em.”

“Hmm.”

Cee couldn’t stand it. The way they talked over him and through her.

“Is he going to be ok?” She asked, nearly yelled, over the din of their work, despite the weakness in her knees. Her voice was strong and forceful; she was afraid if she wasn’t, wasn’t bold with her demands, they would ignore her. That they would overlook her, forget she was even there.

Forget that she _knew_ this person they seemed to care so little about.

“I don’t know.” The woman said as she completed her work with the lines, ensuring they were patent and anchored.

Her face _burned_. How could they _not know?_

Cee’s watched the woman kneeled at Ezra’s side. She watched as the medic lifted one of his eyelids and shone a light into his eye. Cee didn’t know what she was looking for. The woman looked back at the machine her partner was still holding, put her own hand to Ezra’s throat, feeling what Cee knew to be a pulse point.

“Ok, let’s get him out of here. I think he’s gonna arrest.” The woman said as shook her head, as she peered down at her patient.

“What? Wait, what’s that mean?” Cee nearly dropped the bag in her rush to get a word in. It felt heavy and cold in her hand. What did she mean she thought he was going to _arrest_?

_But, we **made** it._

“Hey, what’s that _mean_?” She stepped back, again, as the man moved to help his partner with an unspoken request.

They ignored her.

With practiced ease they rolled Ezra slightly and slid the thin, hard litter that had been leaning against the wall under his back. With a click the responders secured it, locked its hinges in place for carrying.

“Should we get an airway now?” The man said as he stored the loose equipment back into his back, taking one last look at the vitals before his hands were full.

“Not in here,” the woman glanced at Cee, “let’s get him out.”

“Higher.” The man said, pushing the bag until it was well above her head as he reached down to lift the end of the stretcher. She quickly grabbed her pack; she had made sure it was ready in case they were quickly evacuated.

Cee followed the two medical personnel as best she could, mindful of their need for space and the fact that she was holding something attached to Ezra. She didn’t want them to trip over her, but whenever she felt the tubing tug, even slightly, her stomach flipped in fear and anxiety fizzled in her chest.

They made quick work of navigating the ship.

Looking at it now, in a rushed pass, Cee felt as though she were observing an alien relic. In the light of the planet’s atmosphere, pouring in from the open hatch, the craft looked even worse than she had realized.

Beaten, old, dirty, filled with shadows; she’d be happy to never see it again.

Cee followed, stepped out of the craft …

… and was immediately taken aback by the sun; it was too bright and she had to squint against the light. Despite the chill, her skin warmed almost immediately; it was something that didn’t happen in the Black. It felt like something she could bathe in.

She breathed deeply. It felt odd to breath without a helmet, to feel humidity fill her lungs. Crafts were dry, very dry, to ensure the integrity of the equipment. The planet-side climate was nothing like the stale air of a pod; she could smell the vegetation, the exhaust of their former, stolen craft, the bitter freshness of the air.

It should have been a miraculous, joyful moment..

She recovered from the assault to her senses, opened her eyes again to track the medics before her.

Any relief she felt over being planet-side trickled away as she took in the sight of the man being carried before her.

Ezra looked even _worse_ in the planet-light. The stillness, the starkness of the craft had made it hard to see, hard to notice just how _unwell_ he had been.

He’d filled the spaces of the craft’s extreme silence just enough to make him seem _lively_ and _loud_. He’d been hidden in enough shadow to appear, until the last cycle, only _tired_ and _drained_. It had been just the two of them and he, the larger of them, had still seemed _imposing_ and in control.

Now with the croak of unseen creatures, the song of flying birds, the light of the departing sun, the clearness of unimpeded vision, the height of the two able-bodied medics carrying him, Ezra looked lifeless and small.

Everything she’d known and believed about their former situation had been made of half-formed interpretations, half-truths. Ezra had hidden his discomfort too well, and she had been too invested in her denial.

Seeing him now, out of the craft, far from the Green, reminded her of _everything_ her father and Ezra had told her about life deep in the Fringe.

It was a place that defied all order.

And, before he at least had looked as though he fit in with his surrounds; his affect suited the grit of the world. His pragmatism had seemed undeniably correct, unquestionable. His condition, though dire, had seemed like a part of the natural way of the Green.

Now, surrounded by tarmac and clean, polished, professional medical technicians, sun-gleaming crafts, and a far-off city skyline, Ezra looked as though he were an alien thing. As though he’d never belonged _anywhere,_ let alone _here._

She imagined she looked the same. Like something that didn’t belong, something that needed to be flung back into the Black by the flick of a disgusted hand.

She was slipping into a state of shock.

She could feel it in the way her face numbed, how her legs were becoming heavy and burdensome, how her fingertips tingled.

It was the culmination of a severe lack of rest and nutrition, of the eb and flow of adrenaline triggered by each conflict they’d been involved with, with each decline Ezra had suffered and that she had been forced to witness.

The jarring experience of having landed in _Central_ after having suffered so on that Green Moon.

_But we made it._

She couldn’t stop thinking it; she had expected things to get _better_. She’d imagined a swift recovery, all triggered by their mere _arrival_.

Before she could catch up to her own thoughts the medics were pulling away from her, relinquishing her of her hold on the bag that was already nearly drained. They stepped into the craft’s rear hatch – it was a sleek thing, meant for the speedy transport of a patient or two, something you only saw on populated, well-endowed planets – and continued their work.

The man started a new bag of fluids, puncturing it and hanging it with practiced speed. The woman was injecting something into the other line, the one in the crease of his elbow.

“Press-drine, 8-mivs.” The woman said as the man hit a button on a screen on the wall of the transport craft. The information – his vitals – populated the screen immediately.

The man grunted, as if displeased. They hadn’t changed _that_ much. Not that Cee could tell. Maybe that was the problem.

“Cortico-push.” She said as she injected a second medication.

Whatever they were giving him, whatever its purpose, she couldn’t say. She couldn’t tell if it was working. She expected some sign of revival, expected him to crack his eyes open, to breathe deeply and sit up. But he didn’t. He didn’t do _anything_. The only movements he made were those caused by the accidental jostle or intentional manipulation of his body.

The man began wiping away the foam, trying to visualize the wound.

Cee wanted to scream, tell him _not_ to do that. To tell him that it was _deep_ and that he’d make Ezra bleed out if they removed it. That she hadn’t done it _right_.

She leapt up to join them, to grab his hand.

Someone new cut in front of her, arm held out in a strict line across her chest, blocking her entrance. He was dressed as the other two were. He was part of the medical team.

“You have to sit up front, if you want a ride.” He said sternly. The pilot, she realized.

“No, no, I need to be there, I need –“ For the second time someone cut through her attempt to speak, to hold her ground.

She imagined, for a moment, how she must look. Unwashed. Dirty clothing. Dirty, unruly hair. She probably looked every bit the child she was.

“You don’t have an option, unless you want to catch a ride with a transport shuttle. They leave 16-times a cycle.”

“You don’t understand -” She tried. They _didn’t_ ; they had no idea what they’d been through, what the Green had been like, how hard it had been for both of them these past cycles.

“I don’t _care_. These are the rules. _You_ are not helping him arguing with us.” Shame filled her; they were right. It was with abrupt and terrible discomfort that she realized she was acting like a Floater.

She’d forgotten how it was planet-side.

They _didn’t_ care. She was keeping them from doing their job. They weren’t amenable to bargaining or begging, to coercion; there were _rules_ here, the kind that lived in books, not within a personal moral code.

“Sats are dropping. He’s at 82%” Cee’s head turned so hard her neck hurt, her eyes seeking out the screen. Why was it getting worse? They were _treating_ him. He was getting _help._

_Why is he getting worse?_

She sought out Ezra’s face; she could only see his eyes, the dark shadows beneath them. His hair, dark brown and then, suddenly, blonde.

He looked just the same. Terrible. Dying. _Dead._

**_But we made it._ **

“Yeah, Moro, he’s tanking. Grab the int-kit.” She sounded so casual, thought Cee through her haze. _Tanking?_ Though, Cee remembered what she’d said moments ago, about arrest.

“What’s happening –“ She asked desperately; she had every right to that information, she _needed_ to know.

The woman pulled the oxygen mask from Ezra’s face with the push of a button - his lips were _still_ vaguely blue – and replaced it with a manual bag-valve mask. She squeezed the bag and Ezra’s chest rose. Cee hadn’t realized how shallowly he had been breathing. She could actually see him breathing now whereas, before, it had been impossible to tell just by looking. 

Cee understood she was breathing for him, _against_ him, ignoring his own natural yet inadequate rhythm - the one he had somehow sustained for a full cycle - in favor of her own.

The man was pulling equipment from a kit-bag; tubes, small monitoring devices, more medications, injectors, things Cee had never seen used or stocked within standard field kits.

_Why isn’t he getting better … we made it._

“Ezra –“ Cee tried to step forward, to get closer, and was pushed back again by the pilot. He looked more than annoyed; if he had any sympathy for her, it didn’t show.

“Get the kid out of here and get us in the air, Ya’sid.” The woman said; she didn’t even look at Cee.

Cee surged forward, was stopped again, this time with a rough shove.

“Front or transport, you choose, kid.” The pilot said with complete disinterest over her choice as he pushed her aside and pressed the button that would close the door.

_Kid._

He didn’t even wait for her to respond. He turned away, making his way to the cockpit.

They would leave her, some _kid_ , there.

She knew she had no choice. She cast a miserable look at the hatch doors, knew her face was pinched in an impossible frown, and followed.

Without particular ceremony or relief, she settled into the seat next to the pilot. He flipped a couple of switches, pressed a few buttons – the craft didn’t heave, didn’t even shudder, as it lifted – and then they were off, pushing forward through perfectly clear air.

Cee stared out the window, down at the tarmac. The pilot drew them in a wide arc, her and Ezra’s former craft passing underneath them.

From above it looked small and pitiful; it looked as though it had hardly been worthy of flight, let alone launch. She couldn’t imagine herself occupying it. It was an ugly looking thing.

Cee swallowed against a tight knot in her throat; she felt as though an old weight were being lifted in the same instance a new one bore down.

 _But, we made it._ Why did it feel just as terrible?

From this distance she could see the other crafts and pods, their frames seemingly more solidly constructed, their exteriors shining in a way theirs hadn’t. She watched as their inhabitants disembarked, ambled around, and made slow paths to meet transportation shuttles.

“What’s your name, kid?” The pilot was talking to her, but she didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge him; she wasn’t interested in talking.

Not with him.

She knew it didn’t matter, anyhow. That their interaction was, would be, as many were in the Black; infinitesimal and meant to fill literal and metaphorical _space._

She sunk into the seat. It was far more comfortable than anything she’d experience in any craft she’d ever lived in, far more plush and clean. She felt out of place, too dirty and too unrefined to be _here_.

The pilot cleared his throat as he made another turn; he didn’t seem perturbed by her silence.

“That your father, or –“

Cee felt sick.

 _No_ , she thought, _he’s not my father._

 _My father died in the Green_ , she wanted to say, if only to shock him, to make him understand that _this_ , what was happening here, was not the extent of her pain, of her misfortune.

The pilot didn’t offer words of condolences or comfort. With no understanding of the nature of their relationship, he must have felt himself exempt from such efforts; a planet-sider like him couldn’t know, imagine, how strange the Black was.

He must have seen a dozen Cees and Ezras in his time. He must have seen the aftermaths of hundreds of prospecting trips gone bad. He must have grown disinterested in the devastation wrought by a moon he’d never set foot on, come to accept the economy of a blood-gem he’d likely purchase for his partner in a declaration of love.

“Tower said the Green Moon. So, Aurelac?” The pilot said it as though he were proud. Proud that he knew the connection, as though it somehow made him understand the work of prospecting.

Cee rested her head against the cool of the para-glass. She wished for Ezra’s gift of eloquence in that moment; she would have buried the pilot, this unthinking man, under a tide of passive-aggressive insult.

What did this man know about the Green, about Aurelac?

“You two will be the second BG med-transpo this week –“ He said to her as though she’d be interested in that, _his_ work, his disconnected interactions with prospecting. As though she cared to be part of a tally being kept by a man who would use them to complete his sad stories about poor Floaters and Prospectors and Fringe-dwellers.

“Can you stop talking.” She muttered; she’d said nearly the same to Ezra, once. She’d give all the points she had left to hear him talk, to ramble unimpeded about any given topic.

“Okay.” The pilot said, taking the final word.

The pilot’s hands remained on the stick. She sighed against the window, trying to gather herself.

Beneath them the landscape transformed from bucolic to suburban. Cee could see transportation rails, solar collectors, tops of personal domiciles – all things she mostly read about and had never seen, never touched or known.

“Have to call report.” He said, assumably to no one because she sure wasn’t going to respond. She wasn’t interested in _anything_ he had to say.

Cee still felt the weariness of suffering through multiple forms of physical and psychological shock; she thought she would have felt more _relief._ She imagined this moment so differently.

It only seemed to get _worse._

Cee felt terribly despondent in that moment; she wrung her hands, sniffed at the ever-present burn in her nose, her eyes.

Ezra was but two-meters behind her. All that separated them was the wall of the cockpit.

Yet, somehow, in this environment of sterility, amongst peoples completely unaware of the horrors that had faced them, she felt further from him than she’d yet experienced in their knowing of each other.

“Flight-Six to C-Med-Two calling for report – “ The pilot said into his mic, his voice monotone.

Now they were entering the city-limits.

They climbed over buildings. Sun bounced off massive, industrial solar-gatherers, shining bright spots into her eyes. She could see people as they rushed beyond the world below.

They must be close.

“Go ahead.” The voice on the other end sounded as maddeningly disinterested as the team she were riding with. She _needed_ to scream. She almost wished to be back _there_ , in the Black.

Things had, somehow, felt more in control, more reachable and understandable. They’d only just arrived, and she already felt lost in this impossible maw of new people and new places.

She _knew_ it was for the best; that it was Ezra’s only chance, but she couldn’t shake the sensation that she was already being swallowed up and forgotten.

“Human male, age-unknown, late-30s to 40s, unconscious and non-responsive –“ Cee tucked her knees up to her chest; she _hated_ this, hated how clinical it was, hated how they ignored her except to ask questions as though she hadn’t been with him the whole time, as if she didn’t know him.

“ - right arm amputation above the elbow, below the humeral head –“ the pilot said, unaware of how _awful_ it had been, as though it were simply an event that had once happened to someone.

It had happened to _Ezra_.

“ – stab wound to the upper abdomen, right of midline –“ the pilot summarized, his voice plain and straight; Cee wanted to interrupt, to let him know _how_ he had received such a wound, that they had killed someone who had been trying to kill them.

She – _kid_ , the pilot had said, dismissing her – had held someone down while Ezra, blade inside of him, had stabbed over and over with a blade no longer than Cee’s pinky.

Had this stranger ever done the same?

She felt her own place in the narrative diminishing, disappearing.

“ – bleeding controlled, two lines started in field, medications on board –“ The pilot rattled on the location of the lines, the medications. Cee glanced at him, unsure how he knew – he hadn’t been there - before realizing he was reading off a screen.

She hadn’t noticed it in her dear attempt to look anywhere but at the pilot.

It was the same information that had been transmitted to the medic’s handheld, and more. She could see displayed the medications, the patency of the lines, and more data she couldn’t interpret, didn’t know or understand.

Her stomach did a nauseating flip; all that was happening just behind her.

“ – patient intubated in field after single respiratory arrest –“ _what?_ They hadn’t said anything to her – _he’s tanking_ – why hadn’t they said anything to her?

Cee’s hands were tingling again, she was breathing too fast.

“ – vitals unstable – “

She buried her head into her knees.

_But we made it._

* * *

They hadn’t permitted her into the medical center or anywhere beyond the confines of the pristine waiting area. She’d disembarked with the pilot, had been steered forward of the craft rather than behind it.

A faceless staff member had assumed the pilot’s work of trying to corral her – _not my job_ , he’d said, frustrated, annoyed – and had exerted the same dedication to the rules.

“You can’t go that way –“ They’d huffed before expressing their discontent with the pilot, “I told you, you can’t take passengers like this.”

“She’s a kid.” He had shrugged before turning back to the transport, never to be seen again.

The staff member pushed her through the doors, pointed at the waiting area, and had said, simply, _someone will come get you._

In that moment, Cee had felt as though the last ties to any single being that knew her, that cared for her existence in this galaxy, were being severed.

She hadn’t been allowed to seem him, _Ezra_ , despite her fast, rambling plea. She had been bodily tossed aside to wait with other laypeople.

To calm the rising panic, she had wandered the room, touching, investigating, _avoiding – avoiding_ the sinking feeling that she was now truly alone, that the last she had seen of her father had been a violent collapse, and the last she had seen of Ezra had already happened: a slow, slow slip into non-existence.

So, she focused on what was in front of her.

It was a room of endless white and grey, para-glass and plastics gleaming clean, all meeting in sharp corners that spoke of a sterile environment. The seating was stiff and erect but padded enough to be comfortable.

There was a nutrition dispensary on the wall that blinked every so often with the spasms of a new ad: _Thalino Broth!_ and _Euphrate Greens, Freshly Grown_. Her brief, distracted perusal of the menu had revealed more selection than she’d ever known.

She wasn’t hungry, didn’t think she would ever be again, so she’d left it alone.

A grand display was anchored to one of the walls, playing out some programme she’d never seen; the subject matters looked wealthy, endowed. She didn't spare it more than a glance.

There wasn’t much to be seen, as sterile as the environment was, and, soon enough, she found herself sitting straight and stock-still in one of the chairs facing the door that led into the facility, her exploration of the physical space over.

Now, what held her attention were the people.

They were all immeasurably better dressed than her. They all looked more collected, cleaner. She had seen herself, briefly, in the reflection of a very clean window. She’d seen her matted, greasy hair, the puffy redness of her eyes, the grime that had collected on her skin.

They were more poised than her. Some were grieving; small dainty cloths dabbed at moistened eyes, quiet tears fell to make neat tracks, breaths hitched but did so quietly enough that no one would be particular bothered. They didn’t look swollen and ruined like she did; they didn’t sound as ugly in their grief as she had.

They fit into the space far better than she. They effortlessly, mindlessly, stood to make use of the refresher and the nutrition station. They stared thoughtfully at the display. They made small comments to each other, to passing staff, that made them seem so amenable and polite.

She clutched her bag, that which contained all she owned – her notebook, headset, a BIT bar, the scrap of paper she’d written Ezra’s account number on – and took a stuttering breath.

What if all she had left in the universe, of all beings and things, was _this_ measly collection?

Her jaw twitched as her eyes watered. She had thought she’d been done with that.

Some dared to look her way, their brows lifting in expressions made of confusion, pity, disgust, and curiosity, amongst other innumerable feelings.

She kept her expression as neutral as she could, despite the unshed tears that were gathering threateningly; she was too tired to care, too exhausted to feel embarrassment though she knew that, later, she may.

Medical professional wandered in and out, through, sometimes, without a passing glance at a single one of them.

The people around her, too, came and went. Some after quiet, public conversations with staff. Some on their own accord. Some with a scoff and a glance at their fine-looking chronometer.

She watched as some were summoned back and others were told they could leave for the cycle.

She waited, and waited.

No one came for her.

* * *

_Give them the gift of an Aurelac-gem._

The sound of the display cut through the half-sleep she had fallen into.

_Harvested from the lush beauty of the exotic Green Moon, and expertly refined, this rare stone is the most intentional expression of an everlasting love._

Anger rose in her swiftly, founded in her forced state of limbo and accelerated by all the ills she’d suffered over too many cycles.

_We work to ensure our gems are conflict-free and registered._

She looked over at her now cold cup of o’cha, the one given to her by some passing person.

Without a moment’s hesitation she grabbed it and threw.

_Certified by the Euphrate Workers Rights Initiative, we are the most trusted purveyors of Aurelac._

Its contents splattered on to the display, the wall, onto the shoulder of a sleeping man who took no notice. It bounced off and fell to the floor with an ungratifying, papery _plunk._

A staff member crossed the threshold, looked at her, but didn’t say anything.

A tired looking janitorial worker came by later to clean it up; she didn’t say anything either.

* * *

“Excuse me.” Cee startled from sleep, heart pounding in a way that she associated with nightmares and disturbed rest. A woman was staring down at her, eyes taking her in, head to toe.

If she had thoughts regarding her appearance, she didn’t share them.

“You came in with the flight-transfer?” The woman – curled hair, worn in the fashion of Central, well-done maquillage, sleek clothing – asked as she glanced down at a very expensive looking tablet.

No one had ever taken her name. They’d known she was associated, that she and Ezra had arrived on the same medical transport, but they’d never taken her information.

“Ezra?” She asked, sitting up straighter, hands pushing her pack back onto her back, ready to go. Ready to see him.

“The identity of this patient has not been confirmed.” She said while making a note on her tablet.

Cee stared at her, the interaction feeling as distant and foreign as everything else she’d experienced since having landed on Central. She’d _told_ the medical team his name. She knew they’d known it because they’d screamed it into his face in an attempt to illicit wakefulness.

It didn’t seem like the kind of thing you forgot.

“I came in with him. The flight transfer from the BG Towline.” Cee said, steady and sure. It either sufficed or they’d been the only ones who’d come in under such circumstances, because the woman nodded and continued.

“Good. Good. My name is Filipa, I’m here to collect some information.”

Cee fought the urge to lean away when the woman took the seat next to her. The woman – Filipa - sat, cleared a crease in her clothing, gave Cee a thin, polite smile.

“What’s your relationship to the patient?” Cee stiffened as the woman looked at her imploringly; she didn’t look as though she were trying to gain anything, as though she had malintent towards her or Ezra.

She truly looked as though she _were_ simply collecting information.

She swallowed, anxious, unsure. She and Ezra, they didn’t look anything alike. He’d been part of the events that had led to her father’s death. What if they found out? What were the consequences for such a thing? Were there any?

 _Kevva help_ , she didn’t know what to say.

“I’m ... I’m his niece.” Her father wouldn’t have found this amusing.

“Poor dear.” The woman frowned; it was the kindest she’d been offered since she’d arrived, but it didn’t set any of her worries at ease.

“Why?” The woman looked perplexed; she hadn’t interpreted Cee’s question as a response to her own mindless pleasantness.

“Is he okay? Is he alive?”

“I’m not medical staff.” She said it as though she were sorry. She _must_ know something, Cee thought. His information was all right _there_ on that stupid pad.

“Can I talk to someone who is?” Rude. She was being rude, by Central standards, but she didn’t care. She wanted someone to talk to her, direct-like, with meaning.

Filipa didn’t seem to mind, ignored her frustrated request.

“What’s his name, dear?” She continued as if Cee hadn’t just argued with her in the confines of this bland, grey public space.

“Ezra.” Cee said, easily, even though what she had really wanted to say was, _I already told you, weren’t you listening?_

“His full name.” The woman blinked at her while she waited; it gave Cee the impression that this woman was being forced to lower herself in order to speak with something very plain and very stupid.

Cee didn’t know what to say. Full names didn’t matter in the Black. If anything, they were a liability.

She had never heard her father call himself by anything but a singular; he was Damon, and, sometimes Davin, Dorn, Din, countless others. He had changed his name according to the situation, but she had always been Cee.

Even when he was Davin, she was Cee. When he’d been Dorn, she’d been Cee.

Of course, she knew her full name, but she’d rarely been called upon to share it.

So.

She certainly didn’t know Ezra’s full name. It hadn’t come up. It _wouldn’t_ have.

Cee tried to unclench her jaw as she watched the woman put the pad down. She set it on her lap, hands closing together in a delicate, graceful clasp.

“What’s _your_ name?” Filipa asked, calm, with no particular hint of judgment. Cee didn’t think it could hurt to tell her, if it moved the conversation forwards.

“It’s Cee. Can I see him, now?” She glanced down at the pad, tried to eek information from it, tried to understand what this had to do with Ezra.

The woman tilted her head as though she were an interesting thing to be observed.

“Where are you from, Cee?”

“I’m not – “ Cee felt as though she were losing the little control she had in this conversation. None of this mattered, she wanted to shout. This wasn’t how things _worked._

“We have the points. We can pay.” Cee supplied. They needn’t worry, if they were trying to assess their means to pay, or if they believed they would run out on a debt owed.

Cee couldn’t tell what this woman was thinking. This beautiful, unwavering Centralist. She had _none_ of the grit she’d seen in her fellow Floaters, in those who made their live mostly in the Fringe, edging close to Central only in moments of need for better dealings.

“Can I see him? Please?” Cee added, a last-ditch attempt at ingratiating herself; she was desperate for leverage. She felt as though they were speaking two different languages, a muddled meeting of an eloquent, ancient script and a chunky, underdeveloped grapheme.

A bitter part of her was beginning to understand why her father had avoided Central planets so ardently, even when she’d _begged_ to visit.

“Let me ask.”

Cee crossed her arms and watched her leave.

* * *

Cee spent more time in this tortuous state of inaction, interned by too-white walls and traveled by more beings, transient in-and-outers, than she’d seen in a single sidereal year.

It, if anything, offered her some distraction from her impossible state of unknowing.

A girl her age, she thought, sat across from her. Her hair was clipped straight and clean, one side tucked behind her ears. It was a startling, beautiful shade of red, complementing her brown skin. Her face looked fresh with youth and wakefulness, with a cycle that had started with a good meal and a wash. Her elegant, painted hands - adorned fingertips to elbow - held both a data-pad and a beautifully bound book. She occupied herself with both, switching between book and pad.

Cee wondered if she were a student, just like Clo or Rieve.

She tried to peek the title, tried to view the pad, but was caught. The girl glowered, turned away.

Cee, too, looked away and, eventually, the girl was summoned back, disappearing with the barest trace of some lovely scent. Cee pushed down a fledgling sense of humiliation.

It was hard to stay entertained, distracted by the comings and goings of these people. What about them made them so free to pass through these doors? What did they have that she hadn’t? The staff welcomed them with warm smiles and recognition.

She had become an invisible but ever-present part of the furniture; the dirty, tired Floater in the corner.

Cee tried to write, but not even _the Streamer Girl_ could hold her attention. The Euphrate Conservatory held no particular appeal now, even trapped as she was in this small room somewhere in Central. Moreover, her literary friends had no words of advice within their own story; not for her.

They – the characters of her favorite novel - came and went through the spaces they inhabited, through time, even.

What would they say to her, if they were here now, in this room?

Would they speak to her as a friend, or would she be an unfortunate background character – one pointed out by the star of the chapter as one of the poor souls needing _help_ and _justice,_ a person who needed another’s intervention but who would not herself intervene?

Was that her?

More than once her throat collapsed in on itself, fatigue bullied her anger which prodded her ever present sadness across lines she thought she’d drawn.

She wasn’t going to cry anymore she told herself time and time over.

Yet.

Tears fell at random. Her cheeks were consistently chafed and heat-filled. She sniffled and rubbed at her nose and mouth; people were too polite to look for long.

She was mourning _all of it_. Her father. Her mother. What she’d experienced in the Black, the Green. Her childhood. Her lack of refinement. Her otherness in this stifling place. _Ezra._

Cee mourned all of it while people around her laughed and cried their own tears, while the display told her, again, how lovely and precious Aurelac was.

Eventually, she decided to block it out, remembered that she _could_.

She dug into her pack, hands reaching for relief.

She listened to music, one ear snug under padding, another open to the space before her.

 _In the Storm_ blared to the point of hurting; she was sure everyone in the room could hear the tinny sound bursting past her padded headset.

She didn’t nap even though her eyes hurt.

She didn’t eat even though her stomach groaned.

She was terrified she’d miss something, that they’d come in to collect her and she wouldn’t notice. That Ezra would come walking out and she’d be dozing. That he’d forget her, leave her.

She needn’t worry.

It wouldn’t happen for another half cycle.

Then, finally:

“Cee?” A hesitant voice split through the hushed tones of the other people in the room, through the annoying, inane chatter of the display that hadn’t ceased, for a single moment.

“Yes.”

She stood, far too quickly; it made her dizzy and made the other inhabitants of the room look.

“Cee.” The person said again, looking at her. They said it as though it hadn’t felt complete in their mouth, as though the name was too short to be full and final. Cee was tired of this endless wave of staff, all of whom seemed to know about her without actually knowing her.

She stared into their eyes, willing them to end this period of waiting. She’d waited enough.

“Come with me.”

* * *

Cee was led to a room marked, **CMC-11** / **Conference and Counsel**.

She had been expecting to be brought to wherever they were keeping Ezra. She would have demanded so but was stopped by her own inhibition when the door opened to reveal Filipa and a dark-skinned man who was clearly one of the medical practitioners.

“Cee. Sit, please. This is one of our Physicians, Dr. Sanofi.”

She didn’t, she couldn’t.

Instead, she stood there, arms crossed, chin up. It didn’t matter that she must look every bit tired and pathetic as she knew herself to be. How imposing could she look, eyes-red-rimmed, cheeks swollen, and clothing dusted?

“We just want to talk to you, about Ezra.” The man said, unfolding his hands as if to implore her to relax. His name sounded odd spoken aloud, as though Ezra’s personality and accent and turn of phrase would directly clash with that of this man.

It sounded too clean, too polished.

“Then talk.” She said, felt some burst of pride when they traded uncertain glances. If she were correct, and her observations of Central had led her to believe that she was, this was not in the bounds of acceptable or expected behavior of a young girl.

“Ok, well, first it is good to finally meet –“ She’d had enough of the so-called pleasantries these people wasted so much time with, their meaningless words; for the first time, she believed that Ezra just _may_ be from a Central planet.

“Is he dead?” Though her voice had taken on a rasped quality, she asked it steady, strong.

The doctor stopped, hands rejoining as he glanced at Filipa. The woman looked just as unhappy as he did, her hands turning a cup of o’cha in her hand. She looked thoughtfully at her data-pad, at the doctor.

Cee stood, breathing, in and out, waiting. She could feel her nostrils flaring, her teeth clenching as the tension built within her.

“He is alive.” The man said carefully, intentionally, each word given its proper time and space.

_Alive._

Cee couldn’t help the sound she emitted, a broken mewl.

She couldn’t help the breach of tears, even though they exhausted her.

She couldn’t help it when she dropped into a squat, her knees buckling from the weight of too many cycles spent in fear, in grief.

She covered her face, sniffled deeply, tried to breath past the chokehold her emotions were exerting on her throat. She tried to hold in the animal-pained noises she was making but a few slipped past, breaking free on the waves of her pained inhalations.

Everything hurt.

Everything ached.

_He’s alive._

She stayed like that for a moment, _feeling_ , until she heard the rustle of movement.

“Do you want to hear the rest, Cee?” Filipa was bent beside her, hand hovering as though unsure as to whether she could touch her or not. Cee hiccupped, breathing caught on still fresh spasms, and looked up at her.

She nodded as she scrubbed her eye with her dirty shirtsleeve.

The woman gestured toward one of the chairs, pulled it out in invitation. Cee took it, settled in but maintained a stiff posture despite feeling emotional and weak, unwilling to relax.

“Ezra is alive, but he is not well.“ The doctor was looking at her, searching her eyes for understanding. She could feel her lip trembling, but she didn’t say anything. She wanted to hear it all.

“He’s been through a lot, though, I think you already know that.” The doctor glanced, a small and brief thing, at Filipa.

 _What did she tell him?_ Cee wondered, still fearful that she had been busted for a crime she hadn’t known to be one in the first place.

“We’ve cleaned and bonded the wound in his abdomen. It was badly infected, but we were able to excise most, if not all, of it.”

Cee nodded. She’d already known that she hadn’t been able to treat the wound perfectly, effectively. The blade had gone too deep. The procedure had been too difficult, for both of them.

“Of course, we treated the amputation site. It was showing some signs of a developing infection, but it is still early enough that we can manage it with anti-microbials.”

Cee let out a tired breath; they hadn’t paid it any mind during their journey on the Towline. _Of course_ it had begun to develop an infection.

“And, if I understood correctly, _you_ were the one to do it?” Sanofi looked appallingly sympathetic; it was something she felt like she could melt under, the warmth of it. It felt strange, undeserved, unwanted.

For, really, he didn’t understand.

It was something she’d had to do. Something she’d done with little emotion or concern. She and Ezra had talked through most of it. They’d tied up his sleeve and moved on, seeking to dig Aurelac, after. He’d switched all his energies and actions to his left hand without complaint.

This man couldn’t understand.

That was just the way it was in the Black.

“I was.” She responded, looking the man up and down as if to invite him into criticism of her. She knew, based on how he’d treated her thus far, that it was unlikely, but she still felt the need to brace for it.

“You did a fine job. That must have been very difficult.”

 _No_ , she wanted to say, _it had been easy,_ but didn’t.

When she didn’t respond the doctor continued. He cleared his throat.

“Though I’m confident we’ve taken good care of his wounds, it’s his lungs I’m worried about.”

“The Green Moon is very toxic.” Filipa interjected, as if Cee didn’t _know_ that. As though Cee hadn’t been there, hadn’t accidentally breathed in the dust herself. She could remember Ezra, brows lifting, grin plastered on his face even as he coughed and shuddered with fever, say, _you look like shit._

She’d felt like shit, too. She _knew_ the Green Moon was very toxic.

“It is often underplayed in discussions about the Green Moon, or of Aurelac mining,” the woman continued, “but humans can asphyxiate after only a few hours of exposure. Sometimes at the first exposure. Anaphylaxis, in that case.”

Cee hadn’t known that. Her father had never told her that. _Hours?_ She felt the same thrill of anxiety as she had when she’d learned, with minimal time to process, that she and her father could be stranded on the Green Moon, just prior to drop.

“He developed edema in the lungs from the irritation caused by the toxins and the spores –“

“The dust.” Cee offered; that’s what they called it. Dust. It was odd to hear this academic talk of the Moon, as though it were a subject and not a reality multiple cycles away by Towline.

“Yes. The dust. It seems he was exposed via two routes: respiratory and systemic …”

“He breathed it in _and_ it entered his system through the wounds.” Filipa interjected, clearly concerned that she wasn’t following.

“ … making his exposure very high. His lungs took the brunt of the impact.”

She could remember, with startling clarity, the way he’d sounded on the Green, in the Black. The stuttering breaths. The half-formed sentences. How he’d choked on words and wheezed through small, chortling amusements.

He’d sounded like he was _drowning_ ; turns out, he had been.

“Ok. So, what happens next.”

“He came to us in respiratory failure, had arrested in transport. We are trying to help by doing the breathing for him, but sometimes the exposure is just too high –“

Cee stared ahead, processing the words.

“ – sometimes the lungs just don’t recover.”

It sounded a lot like _wait and see_ , and, _I don’t know._

There was a long beat of silence. They watched her, as though waiting for more questions, as though expecting another physical and emotional break.

 _He’s still alive_ , she thought, refusing the seduction of another spiral into grief. She couldn’t bare it. Not again.

“I need to see him.” She stood; strength renewed for the moment. Cee planted her hands on the desk that separated them in a new show of desperation. “Please.”

Sanofi started in a slow, careful drawl.

“Usually, we would say no, patients like this are too unstable for visitors … ”

The doctor seemed to have sensed her distress, raised a hand so he could finish the sentence before she interjected; it was amazing how much anguish one body could pour into a space.

Cee thought it would never end.

“ … however, we are going to make an exception, considering you are a minor and - ” Sanofi looked over at Filipa, as though he were stepping into her territory.

“You live in the Black, unregistered.” Filipa said, confident and unflinching.

Cee suspected they didn’t have too many grievously injured Floaters coming into their medical centers for help, not when most didn’t have long-term landing permission, points, relations, registration cards …

They must have noticed that she hadn’t left. Not once. That she hadn’t done more than used the refresher for its most basic purpose. That she hadn’t changed her clothing or groomed her hair.

She herself couldn’t be sure how long it had been. It couldn’t have been more than two cycles but, perhaps, for them that was enough. For them that may have been startling – to imagine a child with nowhere to go for two measly cycles.

She didn’t care about any of that, especially if it had served her. Let them pity her, for now.

“So, I can see him? Now?” See was anxious to grow beyond this stale state of interminable delay.

Filipa nodded.

“I’ll take you. Right now.”

* * *

Filipa brought her through a maze of hallways and corridors, past the rooms of other intensively sick people. Her steps resounded with a _thump-thump-thump_ in her head; she couldn’t hear for the rushing of blood in her ears.

She wanted to break into a run, to seek him out herself; she could barely tolerate this polite, professional pace.

But, then, suddenly they were there.

Filipa stopped and so did Cee. The woman pressed a small, innocuous button - the known symbol for _entry_ printed plain and clear on top – and stepped forward as the door complied.

Cee followed.

Her heart lurched a bit at the sight before her.

There he was.

_Ezra._

* * *

Ezra was alive.

Cee had expected him to look worse.

She was grateful, relieved to find the contrary, not that he looked _good_ by any measure.

He was still too pale, still too tired looking, despite the fact that he was decidedly unconscious, and he was still visibly sweating. Dark bruises had settled under his eyes, deep enough to make the scar on his left cheek bone stand out even against the pallor of his skin.

His left arm was still hooked to tubing, though it looked refreshed, replaced with something more rigorous. The tubes disappeared into the wall, into panels with simple, modest displays that read: **pipero-bactam** and **triaxocef.**

His right arm, the site of the amputation, was freshly bandaged; she couldn’t spot a single breach of red.

The worst thing was the tube, the one that was helping him breath. It stuck out the right side of his mouth, anchored in place with a clean scratch of medical tape, and trailed off and away into a discrete panel on the wall.

It was what was making his chest rise and fall in that almost unnatural, rhythmic way. She still didn’t understand how he’d gone so long breathing in the way he had been, in small stutters and hitches, his chest only visibly moving when he’d coughed or heaved.

 _Sometimes the lungs just don’t recover_ , the doctor had said, and no, she thought, that wasn’t going to happen because -

\- because, though he didn’t look good, he looked far better than he had in the Black. He’d been cleaned of grime and he _had_ regained some of his color. He was outfitted in a clean pair of medical scrubs, and there was a soft, clean looking linen pulled up just past his waist.

They had _made_ it and he was going to continue to make it.

If he could survive what had been the Green and the Black, he could survive _this_. If he’d managed on expired anti-microbes and two syrettes, a few stimulants, he could manage on _actual_ medicine.

 _Right?_ Her confidence wavered as she wondered whether the pristine environment and her unfamiliarity with it were presenting her with false hope. Was she so much a Floater that she was being blinded by some false and easy modernity of the planet-side living?

Couldn’t they see how much better he looked? That had to matter.

Cee stood, fighting the urge to fidget, as she took in the numbers on the wall to the right of his bed.

 **90/58** – **110** – **89%** \- **20** – **38.7C**

She still wasn’t sure what any of it meant.

 _Why isn’t he getting better?_ She thought for the umpteenth time.

Cee stood there, staring at him. Staring at his too pale face, that tube, the space where his right arm should be. She felt … lost.

“You can sleep in the room, if you like.” Filipa was still there; Cee hadn’t even _noticed._ The woman gestured at a cot that had been laid out on the opposite side of the room.

It wouldn’t be so different than their shared sleeping quarters on that terrible craft.

“Thanks.” Cee croaked. She was _so_ tired.

“This room has its own refresher and there’s a pair of scrub-cloths, too. Nothing fancy, but …” She shook her head as though the offer were inadequate.

Cee nodded, content to have a change of clothes. She didn’t care what they were or what they looked like.

“Ok.” She knew, latently, that she should be more appreciative, but she was too spent to spare any energy on being grateful, on expressing gratitude.

“If you need anything, Cee, you can ask.” Filipa said; she looked half as though preparing to stay, half as though intending to leave.

When Cee didn’t move, Filipa took it as a sign, a plea for privacy. With a tight small and a single glance at Ezra - one Cee followed, eyes landing on the man - Filipa left.

The door shut behind her with a small _thwap_ and Cee was left alone with Ezra.

She spared a final glance at the door, fearful of another interruption, and then made her way to his bedside. A chair had been placed next to his side, just so, as though awaiting her, and she collapsed into it.

She wanted to reach out but was afraid to touch him. Afraid she could somehow hurt him or upset his recovery efforts.

She sat there, staring, numb, for ages.

After some time, her hands, tired of their fidgeting loneliness, crept up to reclaim their hold of his own. She was pleasantly surprised to find it was no longer clammed and burning; it was warm, naturally so.

Cee had the terrible sensation that if she gave in to her own desire to sleep, he would just _go_.

So, she fought it.

“You better be ok.” She murmured so low that it had been a thing more formed of whisper.

She laid her head on the bed, just as she’d done before they had dropped, watching his mechanical breaths.

* * *

Ezra was the same.

Cee woke with a start, her head lifting from the soft bed, a groan of protest over the speed of it all catching in her throat.

She had not intended to sleep, had been _afraid_ to, but she wasn’t at all surprised that she had. Her body had needed it and had clearly forced her hand, had dropped her into a quiet state of oblivion without her knowledge.

It was mid-cycle; she’d slept through planetary night and morning. If anyone had come in to check on Ezra, she hadn’t noticed it, hadn’t been in their way.

Cee hazarded a look at Ezra.

She sighed in relief; he looked just the same.

That was good enough for her, given all that they had been through, all that she had been told. She knew if she thought more over it she’d never get up from this chair; that she would sink into it, become part of it, bending to the will of her own exhaustion.

It begged of her more rest, more inaction.

She couldn’t give in now, she knew.

With the slow movements of one sleep-hazed and stiff, she sat up fully, back cracking, muscles aching with unreleased heat. She still felt miserable; her body was sore, her face raw and swollen, she needed to use the refresher.

She had fallen asleep before she could, the cycle before.

Which reminded her, she was still wearing her stinking clothing.

She managed to shuffle herself from chair to cot, grabbing the blue scrub-cloths, before retreating into the refresher.

The sight that greeted her was not surprising, but it was certainly jarring; she’d never known herself to look so exhausted, so grimy, at least not for an extended period of time. Even during her time processing the delicate flesh of Jata Bahlu she’d managed better hygiene. She’d scraped and scrubbed until her skin was red-raw; she’d dragged tired fingers through her hair until she was certain she’d strip it of color.

 _You look like shit_ , Ezra had told her in the Green. She could only imagine what he would think now.

Her hair hugged her scalp, limp and dirty. Her skin was ruddy from days without wash and her body felt grimy in a way unbecoming of any decent being.

She wanted to scrub her skin clean off.

The thought motivated her into a quick undressing; she stepped into the refresher, water hot and steaming straight from the draw, and allowed herself to melt under the stream.

It felt _good._

In fact, it was the first physically _good_ thing she’d felt in many, many cycles. She hadn’t realized how sore her body had become, how cold she’d been, that the Black had settled in, bone deep.

She was generous with the soap and hair lather, though she wasn’t even sure she could wash the past cycles from her body.

Cee tried not to think.

When thoughts came, she willfully pushed them away. When images flashed within her mind, she tried to paint them over, tried instead to fill her mind with the image of the plain refresher wall before her.

She was desperate for respite from thinking, from _feeling_.

It came more easily in this private space, with the gentle beat of warm, fresh water on her skin. The space asked nothing of her, demanded no action but careful attention to her body, herself.

Cee tried not to think.

But still, she cried.

She made no sound as hot tears mixed with hot water, with steam; it was easier, easier than anything she’d done in so many terrible cycles.

She stayed there a long while, not until the water ran cold – it wouldn’t, hot water was neither a scarcity nor a luxury in Central – but until her bones had warmed, until she could no longer tell if the heat on her face was of herself.

* * *

Ezra was the same.

Cee wasn’t sure what to do with herself.

She had no desire to leave the room, yet she didn’t know what to do within it.

It had been different on the craft. Ezra had been conscious, mostly, and she’d had no choice but to bear witness to his deterioration, no choice but to help.

Now, relieved of any and all tasks, her silent vigil felt inadequate.

She found herself pacing the room like some fear-struck creature. She bit at her nails, eyes never finding a place to rest; the vitals display, Ezra’s face, the space where his arm should be, the door, Ezra …

So, she watched medical staff come and go.

They came to collect imaging of his chest.

They came to check his wounds.

They came to take blood.

They came to reprogram medications.

Never, not once, did they require her help, request her careful eye.

Very rarely did they ask anything about his condition, about him in general.

When they did speak to her it was always small, pleasant things. _How are you doing_? and _Can I get you something?_

It seemed, to Cee, that there was nothing she could do anymore, and it _hurt._ She _needed_ to be able to do something.

It was Filipa who would find a small, satisfying solution.

“You can talk to him, you know.” She said while stopping by with a rounding medical team. “We find patients can hear just fine, even if they can’t respond.”

Cee hadn’t known such a thing could be true. She had never remembered what had been spoken to her in her sleep, if such a thing ever occurred. She certainly couldn’t remember if her father had ever spoken to her when she’d been asleep.

She hoped it to be true but also pitied Ezra if it were. She hadn’t been very good company since their arrival.

Despite her suspicions, she tried.

She told him about the facility: “It’s huge, and so clean. The nutrition station has 500 items.”

She told him about his care: “They said your oxygen looked better today. They said it’s a really good sign.”

She told him about plot-points in _The Streamer Girl_ that she had forgotten to share, still saving the best for his own reading: “She almost gets expelled, and you _think_ she will.”

She told him about her day: “The words won’t come, you know.”

She told him about how angry she was: “But, we made it.”

He gave no sign of hearing her; no change in his vitals, no twitch of a finger.

Cee sometimes felt foolish, would blush over sentences and comments left hanging without response. She would doubt, at times, his ability to hear anything she was saying.

But she tried.

She didn’t realize it consciously, but their small, one-way talks satisfied her need to do _something_ , to be useful to his recovery. It held at bay the tearfulness that came with self-perceived uselessness. She felt a little less aimless, a little less listless.

So, she told him and told him and told him.

* * *

Ezra was the same.

Except for _that_ , the number she knew to be his temperature going up just a _bit._

“It’s expected.” The doctor had said when she’d asked about it; he’d said it as though it were an unfortunate kind of normal. He’d said it with a frown.

“ _Pnuemocystis bakhromii_. It’s one of the components of the dust. It’s a fungus that causes pneumonia.”

Though she hadn’t known the dust to be an agreement of multiple biological threats, Cee felt as though she knew what he was referring to. She could remember the odd organisms – both plant and animal – that belched spores into the air. She remembered the breathlessness that had come with standing in mere proximity.

It had driven her away from the toxic marshes, into the forest again, where she’d stumbled upon the tent. Upon Ezra.

It had made her feel weak, had made her sweat; it had left her feeling tight in the chest. But it had resolved, quickly, once she’d had access to good filtration, to clean air. She realized she had no idea how long Ezra had been on the Green Moon before their meeting; his filter had been well spent, the device itself covered in a film of grime and dust.

“We see it a lot in those who make a living mining Aurelac on the Green Moon.” Sanofi had said it with all the specificity of a man who’d never actually been to see the subject of his work, as if Cee did not know that it was Aurelac that brought beings to the toxic rock.

“What do we do?” Her voice sounded in a monotone; she was tired of asking. Tired of wondering. Tired of the answers she knew to expect:

“He’s already on the appropriate medication. We are hoping his body fights it off. All we can offer until then is supportive treatments.”

She was still stunned, in near awe, of how uncertain they were. How unwilling they were to just say, _he’ll be fine_. They had never said it. Not once.

 _But, we made it,_ she thought, and, _this is **Central** , how can they not know_.

Her father had always told her stories of Central. She’d been before, of course, but she’d always been a mere observer.

She’d been young and trying to stay close to her father, he who moved too quickly through crowds, who navigated conversations without including her, who put plates of food in front of her without telling her what they were.

She could remember, when she was ten, maybe eleven, staring up at a particularly impressive building. It had been constructed to look as though, from the bottom, it stretched infinite into the Black. She remembered feeling a dizzying thrill, as though she’d fall over just by looking so sharply skywards. She remembered her father pulling at her wrist, annoyed with the delay, _it’s just a building, Cee._

Cee could recall his growing disdain for Central and the planets associated with it’s federation. _They think they’re too good for us,_ he would say as he stocked their pods with the same nutrition he always chose.

In the same tune, he would praise it, as though yearning to be there.

 _No one gets sick on Central_ , he would gripe miserably when taken by some alien malaise; every planet seemed to have its own slew of pathogens. She could recall a particularly terrible few cycles when she and her father had been beset by rash and fever after time spent picking Jatrophal nut. The sand-shrub had been thick with mites, a consequence of improper agricultural maintenance.

They’d itched and itched, had been forced to wait to procure medical relief until their Towline had made a stop at an unimpressive trade station. According to her father, the medication had cost twice as much as it would have on Central, that _actually, Cee, this would be **free**_ _on Central_.

So, she’d grown up believing two things about Central: that all ills, small or large, could be solved by its magnificence, and that beings like her and her father were not worthy of it.

Now, here on Central, with a problem greater than she could have imagined herself, the reality _hurt._

“We’ll continue to do our best.” Doctor Sanofi said with a sympathetic turn of his expression.

It meant nothing to her. The pleasantness grated.

She could not forgive Central for not living up to her expectations.

* * *

Ezra was the same.

Cee sat on the sill of their large, wide window, tracing the rain that made steady rivulets down the thick pane. She couldn’t hear the rumbling of the storm, couldn’t hear the patter of the fat, wet drops. She could only watch and trace her fingers along the more intriguing pools, the drops that had grown large and swollen from their collection of _other_ drops as they moved sporadic, guided by the wind.

She could see Ezra’s blurred reflection in the window, making it easy to both mind him and her own distractions.

She’d been thinking about her father, about Damon.

Cee wasn’t able to trace the exact thought that had triggered it, but before she knew it, she was falling down a long hole, memories opening up to her in a way they normally hadn’t. Perhaps it was because she hadn’t normally reflected on the topic of her father, that most of her reflections had been directed towards trying to remember and understand a mother she’d never really known.

She’d never _needed_ to grasp for deeper analyses of her father. He had always just been there, whether he was actively participating in their relationship or not. Lingering on her own impressions of him for too long had always felt like thinking too deeply on a random pocket of the Black; it wouldn’t lead her anywhere and it wouldn’t change anything.

Now, with her father deceased, she had endless material.

She thought about the way he’d talk about her mother, apropos to nothing at all. Sometimes it would feel manipulative and unfair – he _never_ answered her questions, never followed the story in the direction she wanted it to go – and other times she would consume it.

If it were a physical offering, she would have thrown herself at his feet and begged for more.

He would say things like, _she smiled, just like that_ , when she’d be deep in her writing, and then refuse to elaborate.

Sometimes, _just like your mother,_ preceded an argument, a compliment; she never knew whether to anticipate what followed with joy or dread.

Often: _no, that’s not right_ , he would laugh, high on the Stuff, _you have no idea! She wasn’t like **that** , how would you even know?_

She thought about how he’d get miserably altered, or fall into deep, unhealthy sleeps due to his self-mixed concoctions. He’d take them _anywhere_ , and on _any_ job. It scared her for a long time, until suddenly it didn’t.

 ** _You_** _don’t know what it’s like, so you can stop looking at me like that_ , he’d say when she stared too long.

 _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Cee,_ he’d cry when he went too far and, in his discomfort, came to understand a line had been crossed.

 _It’s not that big a deal, it’s common stuff_ , he’d explain though he’d never offer her any, never let _her_ try and see for herself.

She could remember when he _acted_ like a father. Rare moments of tenderness that made her feel confused, even now.

 _Hey, you did good! Couldn’t have done it without you,_ he’d beam when she’d help finish a tough job.

 _I’m the luckiest father,_ he said a couple of times, often glassy eyed and looking into the dark, _not many daughters can use a thrower, you know._

And, the best, the worst, _she would’ve been proud, you know?_

She never knew whether to give in to the desire to _cry_ over the small comment, or to throw his own words back in his face, to yell, _well, how would I know?_

The rain on the window was comforting; it shifted, moved, yielded without complaint. She could feel the barest cool against her fingertips. She would have liked to stick her hand outside, if they weren’t so high, if the winds weren’t so fierce, and if the windows weren’t so very sealed shut.

Her eyes refocused on the reflection of Ezra, laid out and unaware.

Still the same.

She couldn’t know what her father would say about her current situation, about _Ezra,_ but she could imagine.

 _You’re out of your mind, Cee. You’re being **stupid** , you know that? _She could hear him, had heard him as he anxiously chewed that chalky white pill, over other trifles.

 _That man killed me_ , the anger at her, at Ezra, at the whole situation, would bleed through like venom, _and you should do the same to **him** , he fucking deserves it, Cee._

 _He took everything,_ she could see his face, pupils blown, _take it back. All of it._

 _Your mother wouldn’t be able to believe it_ , he’d shake his head as if the only thing he were, was disappointed, _she wouldn’t even recognize you, who you’ve become._

He’d say it just to hurt her.

She knew her father hadn’t been the same after her mother. That he’d become even worse after his first time in the Green. She’d watched him change into an angry, bitter man over the slow drag of her childhood, over too many shitty jobs that led to shittier pods and even shittier parts of the Fringe.

With a rush of fear that originated from thoughts that had gone too deep, she wondered if it would be the same with Ezra.

Would he wake up _angry_ towards her?

Would he resent her and reject her?

Would he be the same person?

Cee realized that it may be a thing too grand to ask. She’d known him for two dozen days and many of them had been spent in contention, then pain, and now, for Ezra, unawareness. Maybe she’d never even known him at all; maybe what he’d shown her was the face of a man desperate to get off the Green Moon.

Though, she couldn’t believe it. He’d been kind to her even when her utility had faltered. He had bargained for her safety, called her partner when he could have easily called them estranged.

He’d been willing to die for her, to be left behind.

He wouldn’t grow bitter towards her.

She’d learned and grown in bitterness with her father. She’d had no choice. She’d been younger yet, an infant, and hadn’t been able to help but love what had smiled down at her, even if it hadn’t always been a thing of kindness.

Young and small things were like that; unconditionally loving even as the hand grew harder and the face drooped colder.

Cee‘s hands fell from the window, tired of the display, the dark, the cold.

She knew she couldn’t do the same with Ezra, this person who, though bonded via the incredible traumas they had shared, was new to her, still foreign and strange in many ways.

She knew she couldn’t transition from the equitable, warm relationship they’d fostered in the Green, on the craft, towards something distanced and filled with resentment.

She knew she couldn’t care for someone who would turn on her in disdain.

She couldn’t.

No, she realized, as her throat clenched tight with some emotional variant of heartache.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t.

It was more that she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

* * *

Ezra was the same.

Cee waited outside the room, just as she’d been asked to.

“We’re going to try to let him breathe on his own.” Sanofi had told her.

She had reacted immediately, her head shaking in a negative as she asked, “Is he ready?”

He hadn’t looked ready. Hadn’t shown any sign of _ready._

Sanofi had given her a sad smile, had said:

“It’s not good for patients to stay like this too long.”

They wouldn’t let her stay and watch. They had told her that most patients didn’t pass their first attempt at weaning from the ventilator, that these things took time, especially with patients _like him_.

She knew by now that when they said that, as they often did - as if to distance her from Ezra, and Ezra from the seriousness of his condition – that they meant patient’s who’s lungs were so badly compromised they couldn’t be sure they even _worked_ anymore.

She didn’t think she could ever tolerate another conversation about things she had once thought so mundane, about _breathing_ and _dust_ and that terrible _Green Moon._

She waited, something she was becoming painfully familiar with – patience – until, finally, Dr. Sanofi returned to the hallway.

Before she could ask, he shook his head; he knew by now that she wasn’t one to wade through pleasantries or _wait_ for answers to be offered.

“He did his best, but he needs a bit more time.”

“I thought it wasn’t good for him. More time on it.” She said, her voice taking on an uncertain waver. She never wanted to interact with a medical center ever again. She never wanted to go through this again.

“He needs just a little more.” Dr. Sanofi repeated as if it sufficed, as though it overwrote what he had told her. “We’ll try again.”

Cee’s heart fell as she shuffled back into his – their – room.

He looked the same. She wouldn’t have been able to tell that they had done anything at all.

_Why can’t you just get better._

She settled into the chair next to the bed, cross-legged, arm resting on her knee, head in her palm. Her free hand resumed its physical vigil; she beat the rhythm to _In the Storm_ on the side of his thumb, over the tattoo she’d never asked about, and hummed the tune out, letting it fill otherwise empty space.

* * *

Ezra was the same.

She was sitting on her cot eating a bowl of Haloop Maize when Filipa entered the room.

“I’ve been made aware that you don’t leave this room. That you haven’t since you arrived. Unless they are doing a procedure.” Filipa’s voice lifted into something friendly yet admonishing, as though she were expressing disappointment over a rambunctious child’s efforts and troubles.

Cee wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist; why would she? She had everything she needed here.

“I’m fine.” She said, because she _was_ ; this was no different than anything she’d ever known. It was no different from living in a pod. Nutrition was easily accessed by the panel in the hall, steps from their room. The display, were she so bored, would entertain her – though she hadn’t yet used it – and there was a refresher in room.

It was the same as living in the Black and remarkably better than scrambling to survive in the Green.

“Am I not allowed?” Cee couldn’t be sure if she were reaching the end of their grace, their kindness. It was very possible that they had tired of this _extra._ This secondary person who’d come as a just one part of a damaged coupled set.

“Of course you are allowed, Cee.” The woman sighed as she always did when they seemingly butt comprehensive heads.

“But, wouldn’t you like to take a break? Get some air?” Cee furrowed her brow.

 _Take a break? From what?_ She wondered, because this was exactly what she was supposed to be doing; it was more a break than she’d ever taken. Sitting, doing _nothing_ , _earning_ nothing. Her father would have been on her side.

She was watching Ezra recover.

_A break?_

“I don’t need a break.”

“You don’t think Ezra wouldn’t want you to get out and get some air?”

Cee forgot, at times, that this woman had _no idea_ how she had come to know Ezra.

She tried to imagine what he would say to her, if he knew about what she’d been up to, and quickly realized that Filipa may be right.

 _Not sure this is a practical use of your time, little bird, I sure ain’t going anywhere_ , he might say.

Or, maybe, _as flattering as this all is,_ _it has to be about as interesting as watching water evaporate, birdie._

Probably: _not to be outdone, but you look like shit and should spare a cycle for yourself, see the sights, go on._

“I have nowhere to go.” Cee looked at Ezra, still frustratingly unchanged, and then back at Filipa. She wouldn’t know where to begin and she wouldn’t want to risk getting _lost._

“How about the observation deck?” Filipa tried.

The idea made her anxious and a little nauseous. The idea of willingly leaving Ezra, of missing something crucial, though, she’d been told that terrifying time had _likely_ passed.

 _Let me sleep, girl,_ she could imagine him saying, snappish yet completely harmless, filled with that warm lilt of fondness she missed.

Cee gave Ezra a final appraising look. _He’ll be fine_ , she convinced herself, even as her stomach churned.

“Can I bring my notebook?” Cee asked, afraid to offend this person who had dealt with more than her fair share of rudeness; she wanted to write, if she could, but didn’t want to ignore the woman completely if she were to chaperone.

“Of course.”

* * *

Ezra was the same.

So, she left with Filipa, allowed the woman to lead her to the observation deck. It was a vast space, settled on top of the building. It was decorated with all variety of plants, and was protected from the elements by a weather-shield that could go and go with planetary whims.

It felt good to write.

She hadn’t been able to do so since before her father had died. Putting pencil to paper had felt empty, the words refusing to flow. Worse, she hadn’t been able to see herself in the stories anymore. She had felt, for a time, disconnected from the narrative she held so dearly.

Now, the words came. It was as though everything were _settling._

She filled in pieces to _The Streamer Girl_ that she hadn’t thought of before. She added new emotional nuances, things she hadn’t realized had been there before but that she could now inexplicably see.

On a page in the back of her notebook she even took time to work on something of her own; she wrote the beginnings of a story, uniquely hers and but a single page. She wrote it slowly, carefully, before growing tired and abandoning it for the more familiar material.

Time passed quickly for suddenly her shadows were pointing in an entirely different direction and Filipa was in front of her offering her an orange drink.

Salqui fruit, she knew; she had never tried herself.

She took it with a thankful nod and sipped; it was sweet, delicious.

It was something Ezra would like, she thought.

Filipa took the seat across from her, on a large stone bench. She crossed her legs, waited.

For a moment, Cee was horrified.

“Have you been here the whole time? I’m … I’m sorry, I get lost in it, sometimes –“ Cee shut the notebook

“No, no. I haven’t. You looked so engaged. I only just got back.” Filipa smiled, her olive skin making her teeth look impossibly white.

“Oh, ok.”

“I can leave you be, if you want more time.”

“No, I should get back.” She said as she stuffed the notebook in her pack; she had been gone _far_ too long.

But she didn’t make a move, didn’t rise from the soft stone that bled such delicious warmth. It was with some shame that she realized she was afraid to go back. Afraid that she had upset a precarious balance by leaving, that she should stay gone.

That it would be best for both of them.

She wasn’t quite sure where _that_ thought had come from but it sat bitter in her throat.

“Are you alright, Cee?” Filipa. Cee felt a run of aggravation.

This woman was far too kind; it didn’t align with any reality she knew, this ceaselessly soft demeanor made of smooth lines. Cee couldn’t help but think that she would do poorly in the Fringe.

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve been through a lot.” The woman said as though confirming a truth they hadn’t really spoken about.

“It’s nothing I can’t handle.” She said, even though she could feel the very, very fine cracks of her insecurities and anxieties, her fear, starting to spread around her frame, liable to shatter.

“I know. I know you can handle it.” _It_ hung in the air. Did she know the extent of ‘it’? Cee didn’t know what this very nice woman wanted from her.

“You seem close, with your uncle.” Filipa said it so softly that Cee had to look away.

She couldn’t imagine what this woman would think if she knew the truth. A bitter part of her, angry at this woman’s interest in her life, a life that was undoubtedly alien and lacking and _sad_ in her eyes, wanted to tell her the truth.

Cee would have liked to have seen the discomfort in her eyes when she told her that, _actually_ , Ezra had killed her father, had been part of the events that facilitated it. That they had both stood stock still, weapons raised, at _each other._

Cee would have liked to have seen how appalled her features would bloom when she told her that she had held a gun at his back for the better part of a cycle and, though hands quaking, had been ready to kill him.

Cee would have liked to watch as she tried to imagine a sixteen-year-old girl holding down a cruel-tempered mercenary while she was stabbed and stabbed, until the life bled from her eyes.

Cee would have liked to watch her features fall from this false smile when she told her they’d known each other but an approximate _twenty-something cycles_ , that she didn’t know exactly because that’s how it was in the Black.

Cee would have liked to see her crumble as she tried to manage cycles of watching this person, someone she had come to inexplicably _care_ about, become so ill, to nearly die.

Cee would have liked to trade places, all so see may herself from the outside, may cut through the disorienting haze of confusion to see, truly see, what was left, where she could go if she were to lose the last person in the Black who knew anything about her.

Cee had never felt the need for someone to tell her what to do, had never craved to know, just precisely, what was to come.

But now - it was as if she were realizing just how alone she truly was, had been … would be.

How, even with her father she’d been a solitary being. She’d born her discomforts and anxieties in the privacy of her own internal world _._ She’d taken delight in her hobbies, felt the thrill of passion for beautiful stories in secret. She’d been refused access to the higher knowledge of her own existence – her place of birth, the means by which she would subsist, everything – by a father who would only ever see her as a child who could not carry the weight of such things.

She could see – she’d _always_ been alone.

Though, that wasn’t quite right.

_Lonely._

It was _this_ she realized – that yawning maw of loneliness - that was absent when she was with Ezra.

Together, they’d born their discomforts; Ezra, unlike her father, was honest, even when it didn’t benefit him. _You killed my father_ , she’d said. _That is technically true_ , he had admitted _._ He’d asked her to help mind his wounds, and she had complied, had been completely trusted.

Together, they had discussed preoccupations; he’d listened to her when she’d been sent aloft by a fit of passionate rambling. He’d been curious. He’d shared his own, despite there being no particular reason for him to do so. He told her because she had asked.

Together, they had planned, had kept each other informed; he’d allowed her to speak her piece with the mercenaries, had looked to her as though her suggestions had weight, worth. She’d trusted him with her life as she ran wild through the Green, as her body collided with that of a person, one she would help murder.

It was with the shock of a piercing awareness that demanded to be known that she finally understood just _what_ it was that made her fear losing this strange, new person.

With Ezra, she did not feel _lonely_ anymore.

Cee didn’t know how long she had lapsed into silence. Her reckoning felt as though it were a thing long and stretching, microscopic and brief.

Finally:

“I don’t want him to die.” Cee said, her voice low as if to maintain its integrity; she knew it prone to crack and split, these days.

Filipa’s expression did not waver.

“I know.”

And Cee thought that she did.

“I’ll walk back with you.”

Cee nodded.

She could use the company.

* * *

Ezra was the same.

Lungs still clouded enough to require anti-microbe therapy, breathing too unstable to afford another, proper trial.

Cee was beginning to imagine Ezra as a precariously built craft; remove one piece and a problem would arise elsewhere, falling apart as the failings spread. 

_But_ , a nurse said, aware that Cee was unhappy with the news, _his temperature is normal._

Cee told Ezra as much.

“Your temperature is down. That’s a good sign.”

No response, of course.

“And I’m doing ok. Thanks for asking.”

Nothing.

She picked at the sleeve of her shirt; they been kind enough to wash it and it felt good to be in her own clothes. Her hands caught a stray string before tempering herself, it would unravel straight off her body if she kept on.

She sat down in the chair, did her usual once over.

Still _not_ awake. Still ill looking. Hair still wild and unkempt, blonde patch stuck up in a stubborn slick.

Cee looked out the window; the sun, larger in the sky than she’d seen on any planet, was visible, too bright. It was annoying.

Cee looked at her cot, one massive bundle of cloths she’d done nothing to tame that cycle. Her notebook and audio-set sat at its end; she didn’t feel particularly interested.

Bored.

She realized she was _bored_ , which made her wonder if _he_ was bored.

If Filipa was right and he _was_ generally aware of his surroundings, he had to be, right? A rush of pity ran through her; she would have gone mad.

For the first time she decided to turn on the display.

She sat through several mind-numbing advertisements before changing the programme.

Nothing caught her eye; the sights were strange and completely foreign, but not in a way that attracted attention.

Newscasts about issues she’d had no idea about, no interaction with.

Images of a celebration for an occasion she hadn’t known to have transpired.

 _That_ commercial; she paused on it, would have loved to hear Ezra’s commentary.

A programme filled with yelling and angry looking beings, the subject of the argument _seemingly_ some small transgression, a social snub.

Weather.

More advertisements. _Visit the Opal Moon and find serenity_ , and, _consider taking an adventure to the Fringe on our line of Class-A Skim Ships_ , and, _Tanai Nutrition replacements, proven effective_.

The noise filled the space of their room in a way that hurt her ears; it felt demanding, exhausting. The volume changed with each transition, certain sounds bounced off the walls and returned two-fold.

She imagined Ezra would hate it, that he _did_ hate it. It was a lot of talk and little content, and, if anything were to be said of Ezra’s talkative tendencies, it would be that at the very least, it had purpose, had _content._

She turned off the display and the room settled.

His silent company was far better.

* * *

The medical team came back and told her they were going to try again.

“It may have been too fast for him, last time. We’re going to ease him off the medication, slowly.” Dr. Sanofi said in reference to the concoction that see knew was keeping Ezra calm and compliant.

It had made her worried, at first, the need to sedate Ezra for such a long period of time, but Filipa had done her best to assuage her fears.

She’d explained, gaze kind and tender, as always, that it was more comfortable that way, that the alternative was to bear the tube _and_ consciousness, and that nearly _no being_ tolerated it.

Cee had made her laugh, then, when she’d told her that Ezra, indeed, would not have tolerated that, that he talked too much to tolerate some tube in his throat.

“I’m not kidding.” Cee had said, arms crossed over her chest. “He never shuts up.”

And again, Filipa had laughed, her eyes sparkling.

“I’ll have to let him know your opinions on the matter. When he wakes up, of course.”

Cee had wanted to smile but couldn’t quite form it. Still, she’d huffed, said, dryly:

“He already knows.”

It had been the most normal, most mundane, most _enjoyable_ spate of conversation she’d had in cycles.

Now, she was waiting for Dr. Sanofi to recollect her. She’d become used to evacuating the room when medical staff needed to do something. It still made her anxious, made her worry. No amount of time and familiarity drained her of the concern that he would just _let go_ while she wasn’t looking.

She waited a long time; long enough to have to wander off to the nutrition panel to choose a meal. Long enough for her to eat it. Long enough for her to revisit the anxiety she’d felt previously.

She’d been about to peer inside – something they had told her not to do – when Sanofi emerged, a smile plastered on his kind features.

“He did it?” She leaned forward, her tone – she knew, cringed – was filled with child-like glee.

Dr. Sanofi smiled again, his huge figure seeming somehow smaller, as if to accommodate her, as he laid a hand on her shoulder. He gave it a gentle squeeze.

“He did it. He’s off and breathing on his own.”

She felt a smile build on her face; it hurt, so foreign had the action become. It didn’t quite reach her eyes, and didn’t split her mouth into something toothy, but it still felt good.

Her hands reached up to cover her mouth as she pursed her lips, as she tried to stifle her own joy. She’d become afraid of it, she knew, but the emotion persisted.

“So, he’s awake?” She croaked; she was very tired of riding these waves of emotional intensity, but, she had to admit, they were turning in the right direction.

Dr. Sanofi shook his head but didn’t look any less pleased; if anything, it made him look even more gentle, even more careful.

He held a hand up, as if to reign her in.

“We need to ease him into it. For a moment he was a bit … combative, which isn’t easy on the lungs, or the body.”

Cee grinned as though it were the best thing she’d ever heard. He could have told her that Ezra had jumped out of the bed and had tried to stage a coup and she would have been elated.

“He’ll wake on his own naturally, soon.”

Her grin wavered over the thing inside her that had seen too much of the contrary; she’d been told, promised a lot as of late.

“Don’t worry, he’s a fighter.” He leaned in, his face twisting into something a little conspiratorial. “He tried to punch me.”

For the first time in a long while, Cee laughed.

Now _this_ is what landing, _arriving_ felt like.

* * *

Ezra was the same.

Though, the fact that he’d tolerated the extubation was a massive improvement. Cee was startled by how much better he looked without the tube in his mouth; how much better it made _her_ feel.

He was getting _better._

Finally, _finally,_ he was beginning to make gains; he had graduated from looking like he was dead, to _just_ dying, onto _very, very_ sick, and had now just arrived at _not at all well._

Cee never she thought she’d feel so hopeful, so ecstatic over someone looking so unwell. He was due to arrive at plain old _shitty_ any day now. She could _happily_ deal with shitty.

Shitty was mussed hair and dark shadows under one’s eyes; it was a poor appetite and a poor mood. It was _survivable_.

They’d replaced the tube with a mask - similar to the kind she’d seen used by the medical responders - for a cycle and had then allowed him to step down to the small, hardly there tube that delivered oxygen into his nose.

He looked like he were sleeping.

 _Just_ sleeping.

His chest rose and fell on its own, the breaths far stronger than anything he’d been able to produce previously, without aide. He still coughed, still wheezed when he was due for treatment, but he was standing, metaphorically, on his own two feet.

He twitched in his sleep, a jolt of his hand, a restless turn of his neck – _all good signs_ Sanofi had said.

She sat next to his bed for the better part of the cycle _waiting_.

“Now you’re just being lazy.” She said, mindful of what Filipa had told her, that it was very likely that he could _hear_ her, no matter how deep he had been.

* * *

Ezra was the _same._

So, Cee was writing, the sound of her pencil scratching the paper in an effortless flow filling the comfortable calm of the room.

Every once in a while, she glanced up at the man – eyes shut, breaths even, calm - who seemed to be staging the most drawn-out version of waking she was sure to ever witness.

She’d waited, grown restless with need for something to do, and had retreated to her cot. Retreated into the soothing rhythm of writing. She found a pace that allowed her mind to stray from the emotional turmoil of too many cycles, allowing her to find a much-needed balance.

It was why she missed it.

The silent clench of a hand, reclaiming itself.

The quiet hitch of a waking breath, the first in a long while.

The furrow of a very confused brow, an awakening to a sense of self.

The turn of an overly sore neck, a reminder of bodily existence.

Then, a cough, a groan.

Cee’s pencil halted over the page, sentence all but forgotten, the right words falling away forever.

She’d imagined it, she thought, even as her heart began to race and her face became hot. Even as her breathing grew fast, and her eyes burned.

She was afraid to check, to _look_ , but –

\- but she did anyway.

For the first time in cycles Cee’s eyes locked with Ezra’s own; it was the same, kind gaze she’d known before.

“Hey … little bird.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, shout out to my main girl, Cee, who carried this chapter on her back while our homeboy slept like a bum the entire time. Ezra will be picking up the slack in the final chapter.
> 
> Another shout out to my homies who have a very specific taste for unreasonably-long-and-descriptive-hospital-stay-whump; there’s gotta be like, what, at least one of you out there. That was unnecessary and I apologize; this fic is 140+ pages, what am I doing? 
> 
> A last shout out to my main bad bitch who did try to punch me while still on propofol a couple shifts ago. I hope you’re thriving.
> 
> For real, I almost did it ya’ll, almost did our boy dirty and killed him. However, my love for the character, you beautiful readers, Pedro Simpin’ Pascal, and the Prospect universe, staid my violent and hungry hands. Medical realities be damned.
> 
> Lastly, my deepest condolences. This story just won’t shut up and die. Someone put it out of its misery, please. I am fairly certain we are due but one more chapter, and then we can all move on :) Please, I need to close my Netflix – Prospect (2018) tab. 
> 
> Release me, Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell.
> 
> (But also, I will quit my job, I will throw it all away into a flaming dumpster, if you ever turn this into a Netflix series and need fanfiction writers. I will throw hands all the way to the writer’s room, walking from Louisiana to wherever. I will take payment in pickles. I will write on a Sony Vaio from 2001.)
> 
> Notes on the Towline: I made this up; I know they called the ride back the slingback, and I know the line was named, but the craft itself? Did that have a name? I don’t know. This was my name for it. Cee and Ezra are riding the Spirit Air (Ryanair, for my friends in the EU; they once ran over my luggage <3 ) of Towlines.
> 
> Notes on respiratory distress: Our boy would have absolutely pooped out – a term my respiratory techs use a lot in reference to a sudden free-fall into respiratory arrest – earlier than he did in this story. I’ve had patients die from sepsis and/or pulmonary edema after showing their first symptoms the day before and while being on three antibiotics, LR fluid resus, oxygen, etc., I’m only mentioning this to cover my ass with any medical professionals out there who think that I might think someone could survive this state for a prolonged period of time without intervention. Ezra would be a sepsis, respiratory, trauma-alert nightmare. Don’t worry, ya’ll – haven’t lost my license yet <3 
> 
> Also, weaning from a vent is a massive pain in the ass and involves a lot, most of which I skipped because I’m just lazy and I doubt you'd care.
> 
> And, Ezra isn’t in a coma in this chapter, he’s 👌𝓈𝑒𝒹𝒶𝓉𝑒𝒹👌. My moronic ER heart wouldn’t know what to do with a patient in an actual, clinical coma, let alone a literary one. I know nothing of such things. I am the Jon Snow of comas. If you’re not sedated, snowed, or B52’d, and you appear coma-like, I’m just going to assume you’re dead. 
> 
> Random: I really didn’t want to use the term doctor or nurse but couldn’t find a way out of it. It just doesn’t sound *waves hands in a non-descript but vaguely jazzy way* space enough. Dr. Sanofi is named after the pharmaceutical company that forces me to enter its name into my computer every/single/time I give a TDAP injection. 
> 
> Notes on music: this is the song Cee listened to in the beginning of the movie, and within this chapter while she was in waiting room purgatory hell. It is called Crying in the Storm by Rita Chao. 
> 
> It is also a banger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjTFkOeusXM&list=RDMM-iYbFkXPTkU&index=5
> 
> Notes on various concepts: being registered is only meant to be a status of legal recognition of planet-hood, one that offers a subject benefits/aid/etc., lacking such does not imply the concept or status of alien-hood. I don’t really know if it was intended that we associate being a Floater with a negative thing, but in this story, from Central’s perspective, it is a hardship and one that is associated with a lower standard of living and increased ‘social-risk factors’, whatever that means in space. Filipa is a space-case-manager. Dr. Sanofi teaches space-spin on his days off.
> 
> Notes on OCs: My OCs are only as developed as the main characters demand them to be. If Cee and Ezra don't care, I don't care. That is why most are left under described. I'm being enabled.
> 
> MOST IMPORTANTLY:
> 
> YOU. You wonderful people out there. Thank you for your very kind support during the writing and the reading. I can’t express how not only welcome it is to receive kudos and earnest reviews – critical or gushing – but how damn decent it is. To take the time to let someone know that the time spent on their work was meaningful, noticed, enjoyed … what a thing of grace. 
> 
> Never stop being wonderful, here and elsewhere. 
> 
> (Happy Mardi Gras Season, Ya’ll!)


	4. PART IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then ...

Cee was there.

His return to consciousness was difficult.

Ezra was no stranger to returns; he’d made many of them in his life. Returns to the Green, each trip failing to chip away from the _need_ that drove him back. Returns to lovers, many of whom he didn’t fully remember, and most of whom he couldn’t name. Returns to old conflicts and wounds, ones he’d thought had long since resolved or healed. 

But this, this felt impossible and spanned across time unknown to him.

He had the distinct impression that he had made multiple attempts to breach this unseen fog. It was a familiar haze, one that had been broken by assaults of external stimuli – voices familiar and unfamiliar, images that were too confusing, too quick to understand, the sensation of being bodily bullied without any agency of his own – followed by the not-of-himself drag of some chemical process pulling him back under.

He had memories that were puzzling and mundane and concerning. His own name spoken, clear but quiet, something to which he had wanted to respond but hadn’t been able.

Hands holding him down while he _choked_ , the feeling of suffocation growing with no way to relieve it.

The whispers of conversations he may or may not have had, ones he had wanted to respond to, but perhaps hadn’t.

A small pressure in his left hand, the kind you thought you should curl your hand around.

He’d spent endless time in moments of surmounting confusion, in discomfort over the lack of ability to dissect what exactly was happening to him. His self would bubble to the surface _just_ long enough to wonder _what in Kevva’s name_ was going on.

Then, suddenly, for the first time, the thing that would come and coax his awareness away, that would flood his veins heavy, just wasn’t _there._

Without it he could _feel_ more acutely, could _sense_ with more accuracy.

He suddenly became aware of the irritating sensation of air being forced into his nose. The soreness of his neck and shoulders. The loose, empty splay of his hand. The way he was sunk into soft things, cloths cleaner than any he’d ever lay on, if their feel and scent were anything to go by.

A bed, then. Half laying, half sitting.

He could hear something far off, scratching and scraping, a light and intentional thing. He could hear his own breathing.

It was more than just sensing it, all of it. It was _knowing_ it. He didn’t have to grasp, reach so hard to connect the input to the analysis to the answer. It came quickly

A medical center.

 _We made it,_ he thought as he tried to lift his very heavy eyelids to see for himself.

Eventually he managed with a groan, a cough; coming to awareness, coming back _to life_ , was a trying thing and very hard work. His body hadn’t been doing much on its own, as of late. He could feel it in the way his muscles felt sore and wiry, the way swallowing hurt, the way coughing seemed compulsory.

His gaze landed first on the ceiling of what must be his ‘room’. Bland, white, a single adjustable lamp overhead, ready for use but thankfully off.

 _We made it._ It seemed impossible, unbelievable.

Then there was movement; it caught his somewhat sluggish attention and turned his neck just enough to see. The sight was a rewarding one; the other half of the ‘we’ accounted for.

_Cee._

It was very good to see her.

She was sat at the edge of a cot, a few paces from his own bed, snug against the wall. Through tired eyes she was a little blurry looking but recognizable all the same. Blonde hair that looked as though it had been cared for. Eyes bright and clear and intelligent, all of that visible even from the small distance.

She was sat up like an animal at attention, her mouth parted in what he imagined to be surprise.

He swallowed past the dryness, intent on greeting her proper.

“Hey,” he croaked, an exhausted thing; the mere effort nearly took it out of him, “little bird.”

Her face seemed to crumple, then, even as she moved forward with enviable vitality; a quick hop from her cot, a two stepped leap to his bedside.

He had a mere second to scrape the haze clean and brace himself as she launched herself forward.

He huffed, the air expelled from his lungs, as her body impacted his. He arms curled around his neck. His own arm – the only one – reached to brace her, hand firm across her back.

They’d never really interacted like this, and it was surprising enough for Ezra to feel lost in a small state of shock.

They’d touched before, of course. In the Green he had used her as leverage, pulling at her belt to pull himself up. She had been forced into close contact while working on his arm, one hand on his shoulder, the other cutting into his skin. She’d bodily assisted him to feet, _dragged_ him to their escape. In the Black she’d offered medical administrations, small and large, over the course of many cycles.

But for the most part, they’d kept some distance.

He’d been wary of offering any physical form of comfort greater than the occasional touch to the shoulder; had been worried about physically invading the space of this girl, this vulnerable thing that had lost her father to his violence. He had worried she would think him predatory, and more frightening than he’d proven to be.

Ezra imagined her distance was made of many things he couldn’t know. Fear of him, certainly. Disgust and loathing, as had been clear in those earlier cycles. The lack of desire to _be_ close to any being, especially those who were strange to her, met in terrible circumstances. Maybe. He didn’t know.

So, they had never interacted like this.

He felt her breath hitch from under his embrace of her and it made him hold on tighter, as tight as he could manage, his energy in decline from the small exertions of waking.

He wondered if this was something she had needed all along, something he had failed to notice. A need for closeness.

His arm was drooping, adrenaline of returning life waning.

His tired mind struggled to make meaningful words, to say something, anything that could help.

“Cee.” It was the best he could manage; his voice was rough with disuse, not something he would have recognized as his.

As quickly as she’d entered his embrace, she left it, recoiling like a venomous snake. She scrubbed her face with a furious swipe of a wrist. She looked like she wanted to strike him.

“You – you asshole!” Her face was twisted in a tight frown; it would have looked angry if it hadn’t looked _so_ sad, so pained. Her lip was quivering, and he could see how tightly her fists were clenched.

He’d never heard her saying _anything_ like it.

And, she said it as though she didn’t make a habit of it, crass words shouted in small spaces.

He couldn’t help the exhale of breath – even as he coughed over it – and the small tug of humor that drew his lips into what _felt_ like a small smile, even as he blinked slowly, tired.

“Don’t you laugh.” She warned, her tone only slightly biting; it was the tone of someone who knew _too_ well the character of the being to whom they spoke. Knew the intricacies of their mannerisms.

‘’’m not.” He wasn’t. He ached for how pained she looked.

But.

She was alive, she was vibrant. She was, _once again_ , berating him in his sick bed. He had feared, more than once, that their circumstances would dull her fire, reduce it to tired coals.

He was _relieved_ to see that she was here and well; he’d half expected her, back in those last cycles, to have made a good and true run for it.

He thought he would have, had he been in her situation. He couldn’t imagine what she’d been thinking, waiting around for him, like this. Not when she had her future ahead of her, wide open and hungry for her attention.

But, if he were to indulge in selfishness …

 _Kevva,_ he was _glad_ to see her. As much as he had wanted something more for her – better than _this_ – he’d become very fond of her.

He blinked as his eyes took on a grittiness; it felt as though he’d spent too many cycles on Saharn, eyes filled with rough stone-sand, face whipped by strong and unusual winds.

Irritating. He’d only just awakened, and he could hardly keep his eyes open.

Knowing he owed her the attention, he swallowed, cleared his throat with a grunt, and opened his eyes. They’d shuttered without his permission; he knew because when he looked into Cee’s worried eyes, they watered something terrible.

“You okay?” Ezra asked, his pitch shifting to something more serious, gentler and more careful.

That seemed to settle her, just a bit, and she pulled at a chair that had been placed next to his bed. He hadn’t noticed it before. He wondered if it had been there this whole time, worried that it _had._

She sat, quietly.

“I should be asking _you_ that.” She murmured; she looked as though she were regaining herself. Her initial burst of sadness, anger, seemed restrained for the time being.

He blinked again. He would have liked to leverage himself up into something straighter, to talk to her with more intention, more _attention_. He didn’t want to have this conversation laying in a limp recline, wilting.

“Sorry, birdie. I’m afraid … in this case … at the risk of sounding immature,” his thoughts felt aimless. Pain-medication, he realized; it was making it hard to follow the threads, to stay awake and present, “I asked first.”

He didn’t want to talk about himself, anyway. They’d spent enough time on it in the black - his pains, the way he coughed constantly, how weak he had felt, still felt now – and he was happy to put that well behind them.

He forced himself to focus, to be patient, as she seemed to think it over. Her eyes stayed on him, for the most part, only taking breaks to glance at her hands and some space above his head.

“I’m fine. It was – I handled it. I’m fine.” He had no doubt that she had handled whatever had been thrown her way with that grace so unusual for her age, but it was an immensely disappointing answer.

“Come now –“ he winced a bit as he tried to shift and caught something in the wrong way.

“ - been laid low for a cycle or so,” he paused to take a deeper breath; it felt _good_ , even if he were still tight and strangely unsatisfied. It felt like he needed to yawn but couldn’t, “don’t deny a man the quotidian details.”

“A cycle or so?” Cee asked, her brow pinched in something genuine. It looked a lot like disbelief.

He was too sluggish to beat her to it. To question her.

“Seven cycles.” She said, her voice stern as though to say, _you should know that_ , as if to educate him on a very hard truth.

And.

 _Seven Cycles?_ It couldn’t be accurate. Not that he doubted Cee – she’d been the _conscious_ one after all – but he’d never experienced such a thing, never been so ill as to lose _seven sidereal cycles._

But, his body certainly agreed with her assessment, her truth telling. The pull of fatigue seemed to make sense in that moment. The weakness in his muscles, the mere inability to hold his arm up for a single embrace. His throat was sore, raw with extreme disuse; he’d thought it to have been a thing of a cycle or two being left un-watered.

The seriousness of it tried to settle, tried to push away the insistent thing that was built of pure, stubborn avoidance. He’d always been one to confront truths, to stand forward facing toward his own mortality, but he’d never strayed _so_ close to death only to come back.

To have come back with _no memory_ of the return … _seven cycles._

True to his ways, his attention was diverted, hijacked by his personal disinterest and dislike for turning over things now past – especially the immensely unsavory ones – and he returned to a previous line of thought.

_Cee._

What in _Kevva’s name_ had she been doing for _seven cycles_?

And.

 _Why_ had she stuck around?

“Seven cycles, birdie,” He started, surprised that it had taken some energy to gather the words, “I sincerely hope you found a … meaningful way to … pass the time.”

She shouldn’t be here. _Seven cycles._ It was tortuous to imagine her stuck _here_ , with him, a man of little worth, of ill repute. She was young, bright, full of youthful energy that he envied. She deserved better, should have _sought_ better.

The harm he’d done this child was unforgiveable.

Cee looked at him like he was stupid – which, he was used to – and crossed her arms.

“None of that, now,” he blinked tiredly, took a deep breath which only produced a low cough; he had the impression that he was running dry the little reserves he’d built, “you make out okay?”

His inquiry lit a fire in her; he could see it in her posture, the way her chin jutted up, the way her eyes moistened as her brow turned down, sharp.

Perhaps she had made plans, had put his ill-earned points to honest use.

Maybe he’d given her the wrong information. Maybe his sick-addled mind had inverted the numbers, stranding her out of fevered forgetfulness.

Hopefully this was a parting visit, her attempt to pass on well-wishing as she made a run for the life that lay before her. She’d do well to leave him behind, his usefulness spent.

He blinked again, hard, eyes squeezing tight as if to clear the sleep, as if the motion _would._ He cleared his throat, winced over the painful dryness.

“You should go back to sleep, Ezra.” She said and it was startling to realize he’d only heard it. His eyes had drifted to closing again.

 _No_ , he’d wanted to say, _a temporary respite_ , _tired eyes, is all_ , he’d wanted to assure her. _Go on, girl, and speak,_ he wanted to urge her, if she were to leave, move on. He’d wonder a good and long-time about her if she were to leave him with nothing but this fire in her eyes.

Instead:

“Hmm.” He blinked _again_ , her shape blurred; it was frustrating, this long drag towards sleeping.

He felt a smaller hand grasp his own, felt it squeeze. He gave a small grin, though it was hard to form. He squeezed back.

He’d miss her, he realized. He’d miss her truly and painfully because there was a great lacking in good folk in the Black. And this one here, Cee, she was a _very_ good one.

“It is _very_ good to see you, Cee.” Ezra said; he could feel his words elongate at the tail end of the sentence, as his own exhaustion dragged him back to that state of unknowing. He sure hoped it wouldn’t be a seven-cycle thing, but he was so tired he didn’t imagine it would be much of a loss.

He wished he had more to give her, if this were to be a final parting. He regretted it, very much, even as his eyes refused to stay open. He felt bad for her; it was immensely inadequate.

He hoped that, when he woke again, she’d be well on her way towards her future.

He hoped she would pass on, to someone in his surrounds, where she was headed.

He slipped, exhausted.

He hoped to see her again, one day.

* * *

Cee was gone.

When Ezra awoke again it was the first thing his full consciousness, scraping through the haze of another waking, understood.

Her cot linens were clean and made, tucked tight, but her possessions were absent; it reminded him of early days in the Green, when he’d worked for Kaslo Porting Freight Company as a fresh miner, and how he’d been expected to keep his cot clean and barren at the risk of point reduction.

The room was quiet, immense in its vacancy.

Cee was _gone._

In the same moment he felt both a flood of relief and a certain kind of drop towards a hideous melancholy.

He was relieved that she’d made use of her time, had moved on and evacuated this stagnant and depressing moment in her life. That she’d said her peace, had given him her final parting – appropriate and one he’d never forget as, if he recalled clearly, one of the last things she’d called him was an _asshole_ – and opened that figurative door to better things.

He hoped she spent every point and half-unit. Hoped she wasted them on frivolous things. He wouldn’t look, wouldn’t check; he’d respect her privacy and would start from scratch.

Whatever he had now was hers.

Now, the melancholy was a thing far more complicated.

He _knew_ that he had grown attached to the girl, that he’d become invested in her well-being in the Green, knew that it extended into the Black. He knew from the moment she had told him her name, her voice lifting in the Green, that he would do anything he could to protect her. He knew, in that craft in the Black, that he would move worlds seek to make things right for her.

What he couldn’t have predicted, however, was that it would extend into _after._ That he would feel, so strongly, the continued need to mind her, to see that she was cared for.

The loss felt as acute as that of his right arm.

Unlike his former partner, she filled silences with intention and meaning; her resolve always shone through in her speech. Her opinions and stories, when unimpeded by her inhibitions, filled the atmosphere with something pleasant and unrestrained.

He knew he’d been lacking in good conversation, but hadn’t realized, _at all_ , that he’d been so deprived of good _company._

Ezra also knew that he’d worry about her. He knew what was out there in the Black, the Green … _Central_ , even. He had seen beings do putrid things for want of a fulfilled vice, want of brief comforts and satisfaction.

He hadn’t fully expressed his concerns then, back in her Pod, but when he’d guessed correct at her intentions with the mercenaries, he’d been worried for her. He’d been trying, at the time, to first and foremost leverage his own way off the Green, but he’d experienced a clear concern for this girl child.

They could have killed her, had they wanted to, for good reason or sport it would not have mattered.

They could have forced her into some form of labor, taken her on as indentured to debts perceived by them.

They could have sold her, for there was ample profit to be made in the trade of living flesh.

They could have defiled her.

At the time it had sufficed, completely, to only warn her, vaguely, of his concerns. It had been beneficial to him to truth tell and to frighten her, but only to the point of her understanding that her plan was a poor one.

When they had made it to the camp, all his concerns felt justified.

Ezra could still remember that warning churn in his chest when he caught sight of the prisoner, pinked-up and encased, and the dead and flattened affects through the mercenary’s helmets.

He remembered the quick need to _intervene_ when Cee had tactlessly stepped out of line – _unknowingly_ – and threatened that they would not dig, her words unrefined and filled with the confidence of leverage she did not possess.

He remembered his own gut-spike of adrenaline when that woman, that mercenary had knocked her to the ground in that animal-like display of dominance. He remembered, clearly, thinking, with no self-satisfaction, that he had been _correct._

To imagine her, alone, was a troubling thing, despite his relief over her liberation of him.

He looked out the large window to his right, ached to leave, even in this state. He wondered which direction she’d chosen. Had she joined the masses of Centralists? Was she down there, elbowing her way through crowds of people, cowing them with a glance, intent on purchasing fine, new things? It didn’t seem like her, but she was _adaptable_.

She would run circles around these people.

Ezra closed his eyes, took a deep breath to calm the stir of worry for the girl, for Cee. The silence of the room filled him with an uncomfortable emptiness; it was too much in the aftermath of unending action, overwhelming physicality.

An errant run of grief split through him.

He would miss her.

The door to his room opened with a soft whoosh and he jerked, had once again been on the edge of an unwanted dozing. He realized, in that moment, that he hadn’t yet met a single member of the medical staff, hadn’t been awake long enough and hadn’t been roused, _or_ , if he had, didn’t remember it.

Ezra sat up straighter, and opened his eyes, wanting to be at the fullest of his faculties for this conversation, and froze.

Cee entered the room, pack on her back, and two steaming cups. Her eyes were trained on them as though they would spill or jump from her hands.

She glanced at him, her concentration unwavering; she’d filled them to the brim and was clearly distressed about it.

“Hey.” She said, her voice filled only with a certain stability; there was no shock, no concern, no fear.

She sounded _normal._

He watched as Cee crossed the room and put the drinks down on the bedside table.

“Cee,” He started, his voice rough; he cleared his throat, though it didn’t do much to help, “what’re you doing?”

“I asked, and they said you can drink. It’s o’cha.”

He said nothing. He was aware his brows were turned up in confusion, in a genuine uncontrollable expression of surprise.

“You asked for water, before.” Cee explained, answering a question he hadn’t thought to ask. They were on two _very_ different pages.

Ezra had zero recollection of this. He imagined he’d come to waking at some point and had fallen right back into his sick, exhausted sleep.

But that was not what intrigued him.

Cee was still _here._

“No, that’s – thank you, birdie – but that’s not what I meant –“ He was at a loss for words – _him_ , at a loss for _words_ – because he had thought her well gone, far away, “what are you doing _here_?”

His voice broke a bit, coloring it with his overt confusion and exhaustion; he sounded _terrible_.

Her expression turned just as confused as his. It was as though they were meeting, miraculously, at the same crossroads despite having parted ways, neither understanding how the other had come land in the same place despite having received very different directions.

“Are you okay?” Her voice turned worried, eyes darting north of his head; she must have assumed him altered, by sleep or sickness.

“Just fine, no need to worry yourself –“ He said quickly; it didn’t ease her suspicion, her eyes squinting into something uncertain.

“I apologize, I’m not being direct - ” he swallowed, coughed, accepted the o’cha that Cee hastily handed to him. It felt _incredible_ ; it soothed his throat in a way he hadn’t been able to achieve himself.

The familiar taste was comforting. He realized, as he savored it, that she had added something sweet; apis-nectar, he believed.

Satisfied he put the cup back on the table; she moved it away from the edge, unhappy with his placement.

“Thank you.” He said, still collecting himself, still recovering from the complete inversion of what he believed to have happened.

He looked at her for another brief moment.

Indeed, they were _not_ on the same page here.

“What I intended, what I meant was … why didn’t you leave?” Ezra hadn’t known how else to ask it, but he knew, immediately, that she had taken offense.

“Leave?” Her face crunched into something _very, very_ upset. She shook her head; it looked like the thing formed by a being betrayed.

“You want me to leave?” Cee was angry and hurt. Her voice was thick with it.

“No, now, you misunderstand me –“ Ezra felt a desperate streak of frustration as she watched her crumble under the depth of her misinterpretations. Her decline _hurt_ him; he’d been imagining her, free and careless, leaping forward into a new life.

He hadn’t imagined _this_ for her.

“How did I misunderstand you?” She urged, sounding like someone who understood they were unwanted, that they had been _dismissed._

She looked as though she were _panicking._

“Calm yourself, girl, and listen - “ Ezra wheezed, his chest feeling tight. She needed to hear him out, though he imagined her nerves had been worn to the quick, sensitive to every little thing.

A small, soft alarm sounded above him and he craned his neck.

 _Ah,_ he thought as he saw, for the first time, the panel that showed his vitals, _so that’s what’s been holding birdie’s attention hostage_.

One of the numbers flashed red, a warning.

He turned back to Cee – her eyes still on those numbers - and opened his mouth to continue _explaining_ the reason behind his inquiry, when the door slid open with a startling _thwack._

They _both_ jolted, unused to the easy intrusions of their spaces.

A large man, dressed in the flashy, white uniform of a medical doctor, and a woman with curled hair entered the room; they were followed by two others, scrubbed in green, who stood, waiting in the doorway.

They all stood, silent and staring, for a moment as the team visually assessed him.

“Cancel the rapid response. Push his treatment up a bit earlier, please. Q4.” The man said to the two people flanking him and his female colleague.

Ezra couldn’t help the immediate sensation of _dislike_ that coursed through him; he’d never been good at being the _subject_ of anything, had never tolerated being talked about when present.

“He’s ok. False alarm.” One of the two scrubbed workers shouted down the hallway at some unseen person.

He knew what he was rejecting was that unique form of vulnerability that such scrutiny created, the imbalance of power that was natural to it. He understood this about himself, but he still didn’t _like_ it.

And, he _was_ okay, if not a little breathless. This seemed like a bit of an _overreaction_.

Cee moved suddenly, leaning in. Ezra reacted immediately as he too leaned in, matching her urgency.

They almost knocked heads.

It reminded him of their quick planning in the Green; a quick, murderous plot developed under immense pressure.

“You’re my uncle.” She hissed under her breath as the doctor traded final words with the two medical workers while they left, their services, whatever they were, unneeded.

Ezra tried not to _reel_ from the information and instead forced himself into the rapid acceptance of it. He was good at that. Accepting fast, new realities.

_Uncle?_

_Uncle._

Okay, he was her uncle.

 _Poor ol’ Damon must be rolling in his grave,_ he thought as the two approached.

“Mr. Ezra, Cee –“ The man greeted them both and Ezra flattened under the title; he hadn’t been ‘mister’ to anyone, ever. Not unless he was being berated and deducted of points under the command of his long-ago employer, or it was said in some drunken jest by another being equally unfitting of such a title.

“ – excuse the intrusion. My name is Dr. Sanofi, the physician in charge of your care.” The man kept his distance, and Ezra could spot it from a mile away. It was the posture of a man who understood he was talking to Fringelings, Floaters.

Someone who was afraid of compromising their relationship by transgressing some perceived cultural rules and preferences.

Ezra wondered, briefly, if _Cee_ was the one they were really afraid of.

“I’m Filipa, a patient case manager. Your case manager.”

Ezra had been about to say something.

“Is he ok?” Cee interrupted, looking away from him and, instead, at the doctor and the case manager.

Ezra suddenly had the impression that something had been tipped far out of balance; three-on-one.

“He’s ok.” Ezra assured her as he tried to push himself up again, the position feeling too low, too open to scrutiny.

He held his tongue, resisting the urge to say anything further.

He was aggravated, wanted to continue talking to Cee and only Cee because he still needed to explain himself, to smooth over the very rough lines of their brief conversation, their misunderstanding of each other. But he also knew he needed to talk, to _listen_ to _his_ medical team.

He still knew next to nothing about the realities of his physical state; he’d been rather avoidant of it, uninterested in it.

Dr. Sanofi’s lips quirked into an amused smile.

“Well, I see where she gets it from.” The doctor said, as though he had connected two familial dots. It took no small effort to school his expression.

He glanced at her.

She held his gaze for a moment before her eyes darted back to Sanofi.

_Uncle._

He would have to ask Cee – _later_ \- just what she had told them. How far did this backstory go?

The weight of how deeply she had committed herself to him continued to settle in. He felt ashamed, in that moment, over his expectations that she would easily move on; a whim-like abandonment of their knowing of each other.

“You _are_ okay, in a manner of speaking. Your oxygen levels dropped. We had to make sure you weren’t arresting.”

_Arresting?_

Kevva, had it been _that_ bad?

The insensitivity of the words he’d only just traded with Cee continuing to reveal itself, to clarify itself.

In his exhaustion he had _missed_ it – she hadn’t been misty-eyed with frustration; she had been _terrified_.

She hadn’t been angry at him over time wasted, time spent in a boring vigil, she’d been driven mad by _terror_.

She hadn’t been trying to leave – she’d been _afraid_ to.

_Uncle._

_Shit._

Another false step amongst far too many. He sighed, which made him cough.

Cee thrust the o’cha at him, again, any trace of her former feelings replaced by a calm, careful concern, a small anxiety. Still, her eyes flitted, flashed some fierce emotion, as they made brief eye contact.

Cowed, again, by a teenage girl.

He sipped, letting the drink sooth his throat, ease the ache in his chest.

“Thanks, birdie.” He said in a croak.

The two members of the medical team were watching, he knew. Observing their interactions. It sat heavy and obvious in the silence.

“Mr. Ezra –“ Sanofi started.

“Just Ezra, doc.” He said as he cleared his throat a final time, sighed over the abating breathlessness.

“Ezra, I am very happy to see you awake. I would like to update you, if you are up for it.”

He wasn’t. Not because he didn’t _want_ to know. Rather, it wasn’t the conversation he wanted to have right now. He’d been having a tenuous conversation with Cee. He needed to make some very important clarifications.

However, he knew there was nothing for it. The conversation needed to be had.

“Sure, doc. I am, indeed, up for it.”

“Mind if I steal your niece?” The woman, Filipa, said, giving Cee a very kind, endeared smile.

_Niece._

“Only if she’s interested in being stolen.” He looked at Cee; he wanted to give her the option, though he knew this conversation was likely better had alone, between him and the doctor.

“Sure.” Cee said, somewhat miserably. Ezra could tell she was doing her best not to let on that she was upset, for the sake of their audience.

“Observation deck?” Filipa asked it as though they were friends, as though it were an old ritual. Ezra was silently grateful for it; he hoped this woman had kept her entertained, looked after, because he’d done a piss poor job himself.

“Yeah.” Cee said, back to single words.

With a final glance they departed, Filipa with a warm, assuring smile, and Cee with a worried frown.

“Ezra. May I?” He gestured at the chair and Ezra nodded, gesturing right back. Somehow, it felt worse than having the man stand over him. He had the impossible urge to _stand_ , though he knew he couldn’t, not quite.

“So, what’s the last thing you remember?” Ezra was surprised by the question; wondered if it was clinically useful or a thing of personal interest. 

“The ship.” Ezra replied curtly, hoping it would shutter the conversation more quickly.  
  
“You remember sustaining the injuries, then.” The man said, not unkindly.

“I mean no offense, but it’s not the kind of thing you forget.” _No_ shit, was what he had wanted to say.

He was _far_ too tired for this. Wasn’t in the mood for the ways of Central. Not now.

He felt the beginnings of an irritating burn in his chest; his body clearly didn’t want him speaking at length. He’d put some force into the response, a bite of irritation, and he was paying for it already.

He’d already been riled by his and Cee’s misunderstanding, still didn’t feel completely clear of that breathlessness.

He cleared his throat in a grunt, an uncomfortable cough following.

“Then you know they’re serious.” The man’s brow turned up in a sympathetic, concerned thing.

“Of course.” Because … _of course_. He’d been there, suffered them, had ridden the waves of pain and fever. He’d felt the encroaching sensation of death; the way his lungs refused to open, to allow the air into his body, the way his body burned hot, the way his absent arm sent nerve-pain agonies up to his shoulder.

There wasn’t a thing more serious than that, he suspected.

“You were in very bad shape when you arrived, and I want to have an open conversation with you.”

Ezra lifted his brow, imploring him to continue, even as he breathed over a harsh wheeze.

Ezra was a man of, what was by most beings’ accounts, _too many_ words. But this, this was painful. The long-winded opener, the preface for whatever the man needed to say. He imagined he’d be called a hypocrite over the complaint.

The man didn’t continue; it was as though he were actually asking permission.

“Well, go on doc,” He croaked, coughed. His chest was catching on something; it was as though he’d caught a bit of dust.

“ - I’ve got nothing but time this cycle and am – _a cough, a sputter_ \- am not one to shy away from – _a cough, a wheeze, pain -_ hard truths.”

He imagined he’d done this to himself because a hard truth was, indeed, incoming.

Something was _wrong_ with his lungs.

He coughed again, couldn’t _stop_ coughing. There wasn’t even anything to bring up; his lungs just spasmed for no particular reason, so it felt. They were terrible, barking coughs, his throat dragging _raw._

He was glad Cee had chosen to leave.

Ezra held his chest; the pain was _terrible_. He leaned forward, trying to sit erect as possible. He felt as though any other position were apt to crush his lungs.

The alarm above him sounded again; it felt a lot like it was ratting him out, snitching.

A steady hand pushed him back, just slightly; the back of the bed had been manipulated into a sitting position, giving him something to rest against.

Someone – not Sanofi – said something at his right side. He hadn’t heard anyone else come in.

He flinched as a self-contained mask was placed over his mouth and nose, flooding his breaths with the push of oxygen and an awful, bitter taste that clung to every taste bud.

“Deep breaths.” The person to his right said it in a calming trill; he opened his eyes, looked.

It was one of the people who had come rushing in before, on the tails of the doctor, concerned that he’d been _arresting._ A respiratory expert, he gathered.

He tried for deep breaths, found it very hard to achieve.

“Deep, slow breaths. The medicine works better if you breathe deeply. Gets to the bases.”

He was _trying_ , he wanted to say.

He continued to try, reached for a mindful state of thinking, and found an even pace.

He could feel the medicine doing it’s work; his chest untightened, lungs opened back up. That choking need to cough faded.

Ezra had seen a man die this way, once, in the Green. An unlucky anaphylactic response to a first-time exposure to the dust. It had been nothing, a breath or two, without a filter. It was a rare thing, but it happened.

He certainly felt pity for that long dead man, now.

It was a terrible way to die.

Sanofi allowed him to settle, waited for him to get over this painful bout; the man checked his chronometer. Ezra wondered if it had been _that_ long, or if the man had other places to be.

“This is what I wanted to talk to you about.” The man said, not unkindly but with a deeply serious drop in his tone.

Ezra nodded, brow furrowing as he tried to adjust, willed his lungs to ease their spasming.

“Just –“ His breath hitched, threatened to send him back into a fit.

“ – do me a kindness –“ He wheezed, tempered his breaths as they came to fast.

It was hard to talk through the mask.

“ – keep this between us.”

He didn’t have the energy to say more, but he knew the doctor knew what he meant.

“I understand.” The man said; there was no evidence of judgment, of disagreement.

Cee didn’t need to know.

* * *

Cee was angry.

He woke to it.

He’d fallen asleep near immediately after talking to Sanofi. He’d gone down _hard_. The pull of exhaustion had been so extreme that he was certain, now, that he’d fallen asleep mid-sentence.

He hoped Sanofi had delivered on his request for privacy; Cee didn’t need to know of it, that ordeal, what the man had told him about it.

Ezra was given to believe he _had_ done so; Cee’s discontent seemed more a thing spurned than fearful for his health.

It was a startling thing to wake to, the hot, enraged glare of a being like her. It was a silent thing, scorching the very wall she was leaning against. It was made all the more surprising by the fact that it was well into Central night, her eyes and form the only thing he could really make out in the dim light.

“Kevva, girl, the Green ain’t done it, but you’re gonna.” Because she would, kill him that is. He swallowed past the sleep that had thickened his accent so badly, elevated the drawl of his home planet.

He tried, too, to ease that telling _rasp._

“Sorry.” She said, her voice anything but, “Were you expecting me not to be here? Should I have left?”

Right.

The sarcasm, the ire, was palpable. He latently missed that thing all beings had in youth, the ability to hold, to express any emotion at any cyclical hour.

She stared at him, waited.

He wondered if it was what had awoken him; the festering of her discontent expressing itself in some atmospheric disturbance. The girl could move worlds, if she wanted, he had no doubt.

“Like I said, birdie, you misunderstood me.” He drawled, exhausted. He opened his eyes wider, shook his head. They hadn’t given him pain medication that cycle; it should have been easy to shake off.

“Cee, you did. I was in the wrong, no doubt – “ He had to clear his throat again, sleep still on the edge, the tightness in his chest awoken, “ – but I hadn’t meant it as you perceived.”

“You asked me why I hadn’t left.” Her voice was harsh with accusation, as if to backpedal on cycles of good relations, of understandings forged. She adopted the same tone as when she’d asked if he had intend to trade her person for Aurelac.

“I did. I asked because I thought you would have. In fact, you _should_ have.”

She blinked at him, or at least he thought she did.

“Come closer. Can’t hardly see you and this isn’t a conversation for the dark.” She didn’t move and he huffed, threw his left arm up slightly, exasperated. It was like coaxing a channel rat forward; it wouldn’t budge unless under its own will.

He sighed, settling into what had the potential to be a poor conversation.

“Now, listen, let me start straight. Trust that I’m telling you the truth –“ He nodded at her as if to implore her to listen, _really listen._

“I didn’t want you to be gone, understand?” He didn’t. He _really_ didn’t, though he hadn’t quite known it, because it had been a thing he had accepted early in the Black. He’d make no claim on this girl, wouldn’t coerce her into continuing on with this way of life.

She was a bright light that he would, by no willing hand, snuff out.

She didn’t say a thing.

He wished he could see her face better.

He took a deep breath, coughed lightly on it, had become used to the need to give in to his lungs wants and needs. He needed to be intentional. Slow.

“I thought you would go on your own accord. Had been hoping –“

His voice sounded too loud in the dark of the room, in the intentional quiet of the setting. It was stifling and made the words he chose seem even more important.

“ – had been hoping you’d find a better path forward –“

It was all true. Every word. It felt good to say it, to air it out; he’d been silently mortified over the implications of his misconstrued words. The time she’d spent believing she were considered a thing to be abandoned, unwanted, must have been deeply painful.

“ - something better than this, Cee –“

Couldn’t she understand that? It was obvious. It was _obvious_ that this was the poor choice, the rotten one.

“ – something better than me.”

It was obvious that he was a dead-end line; a used up thing. A man who’d chosen violence and vengeance over any good thing and had gotten what he’d deserved.

She could still pull free from his toxic orbit.

She _had_ to see that now.

“You’d been dealt a hard hand, little bird. I had been hoping something greater had presented itself, and that you’d taken it.”

Ezra stared into the dark, where he could see her shape shift.

He sighed when she didn’t move.

Perhaps he’d chosen the wrong words, had gone the fool’s way about it. How could one appeal to the senses of the person one had so grievously damaged, over and over.

“Why can’t you just trust me to make my own decisions?” She accused, in the dark. Her voice no longer held that very, very sharp anger. Instead, it was more controlled, more sympathetic.

His eyes tracked her as she slowly leaned forward in her cot, her face catching a shaft of light coming from the window. Her expression was drawn into something thoughtful, something serious and older than her age.

“I don’t _want_ anything _better._ ” She shook her head, glanced downwards at her hands, picked at them in small movements.

Her gaze flit upward in an uncertain glance, as if she were afraid to say whatever she had in mind, whatever was coming next.

‘I’m … I’m happy, like this.” She didn’t smile, but he could _hear_ that she was being truthful.

For the first time in many, many years, he felt the blossom of something good in his chest.

Hearing Cee, this kid he’d come to worry about, care about, want better for, say something like that – he’d never known it.

Ezra realized he had to trust her.

Not in that way that partners in the Green trusted, the only kind he _really_ knew. Not just in the partnership of secrets and information shared. Not just in the even split of profits to be made and planned for. Not just in the literalism of watching each other’s backs when things turned towards dangerous.

Actual trust. The kind you handed to a being when you didn’t quite agree, or when you were feeling fearful over a thing.

 _That_ kind.

And.

He had to let go of this impulse to direct her towards what he believed to be a better future. What did _he_ know, after all, of _better futures_? He’d never lived one himself; had never carved a path towards anything good.

“Okay.” He said, an inadequate little thing.

“Okay, Cee. If this is what you want, I’ll happily oblige it.” He wasn’t sure anyone had ever _wanted_ his company before; his own brother had hardly _wanted_ it. It was a strange thing, to be sure, for this young thing to choose to cut her path at his side.

“More than –“ He corrected himself, thought over the term _oblige._

“ – it would be an honor. For all your ways, you _are_ decent company.” He joked, though it was true, certainly. He’d had far, far worse, and probably would never have better.

She huffed, smiled, her face breaking into a genuine smile.

He wished he had _seen_ this earlier; she’d been looking for _his_ acceptance of _her_ this entire time.

Poor girl, she’d had it all along.

She shimmied forward, pulling herself from the cot, feet landing on the floor. She stood and crossed the space between them. She thrust her left hand out, a lively grin on her face.

His own face lifted into an amused grin as he took her hand.

“Your offer is indeed generous,” her smile broke into something far too mischievous for her own good, “and I’d be more than happy to sign and seal.”

 _Kevva_ , he thought even as he laughed.

Curse the memory of a writer.

* * *

Cee was hovering.

Ezra was sat at the edge of the bed, had decided enough was enough, and that it was time to try to make a good and proper leap forward in his progress.

It hadn’t been sanctioned, of course, by anyone with a medical degree or even something _approximate_ , but they could never understand. A being laid low was a being close to death. He had to regain himself before he grew too soft, too used to this suffocating care.

“Did they say you could do this?” Cee asked, leery of his decision. He settled his feet on the ground, leaned heavy on his left arm, and gave her an unimpressed look.

“No, they did not.” He said, going for honesty. He’d had a lot to think about when it came to them, to her. Even his sleep had been troubled by it, his misunderstanding of her motivations, the fall of her face into a state of betrayal.

“This is stupid.” She said shaking her head while bracing herself to help, stance wider than normal. “You’re stupid.”

“So you’ve told me, little bird. Now, help or stand aside.” It was ridiculous. So much effort for such a minor task.

“Where are you even going?”

Good point, he yielded, mentally. Instead, he said:

“Sometimes, Cee, it’s not about the destination.”

As long as the destination wasn’t _the floor_ he would revel in the success of merely _standing._ He looked around the room, over at the small dining set – a table, two chairs – and nodded his head towards it.

“There you go, the destination, as requested.” He said, brace himself to stand.

Cee stood by his left side, knees bent, ready to take some of his weight, if not _all_ of it, should his knees decide to up and quit on him.

“Okay.” He said, if only to give her warning.

Pushing himself up was easier than expected; his feet were thankfully solid under his stance. It filled him with false confidence, as he stepped forward.

His knees didn’t buckle but it was a near thing. He lurched and Cee was there, taking some of his weight on his left side. His body was not yet used to his new imbalances. Though he’d managed well enough in the Green, the loss of his right arm was more _obvious_ now. He had moments where he was near _certain_ it was still there; it shouldn’t _hurt_ so much. It shouldn’t feel as though he could, without question, grasp and grab.

Ezra managed to straighten himself.

He knew it was a bad idea from the start, but a streak of stubbornness, _anger_ , for his physical state had pushed him forward.

Continued to pushed him forward even as his right knee _did_ buckle, this time.

He landed hard on both, felt sorry for Cee; her yelp likely loud enough for anyone in the hallway to have heard.

"I told you." She said in a rushed panic.

"I'm fine, girl." He said; he had borne the impact with an odd detachment and it was then that he realized that he was maybe _slightly_ high on painkillers.

 _Oh_ , this had been a proper mistake.

"Don't tell that doc, you hear. Mistakes were made. Lessons learned." He coughed breathy through it, even as they both managed to leverage him off the ground.

"I'm never listening to you again." She grunted as she helped bully him back into his bed like an invalid.

"You tell on me," he wheezed, "and I _will_ say you pushed me."

It wasn't a fair jab but it had the desired result; she looked absolutely scandalized.

His body throbbed a bit.

He'd listen to her next time.

* * *

**An interlude.**

Filipa Baiana graduated from Central University’s Tic Quan Du’c School of Social Law and Being Rights at the top of her class. She quickly gained the attention of various leaders in her field and, within the span of a Centralian sidereal year, received enough grants to ensure her work would continue for ten sidereal years. She narrowed her focus after the first year, her long held interest in Fringe populations and Floater culture evolving into several studies, multiple publications, and one book – _End of the Line: Cultures and Societies of the Fringe -_ which, of course, was awarded the _Euphrate Literary Prize – Journalism and Non-Fiction Genre_.

She was recruited by Central Medical Center – a leading hospital in a vast network – to study social and health discrepancies found in her populations of interest which, due to their proximity, began to include Aurelac Prospectors.

When she had been called in to assist with Cee and Ezra, she had felt ecstatic. Academically, of course.

So, when it came to her work with the pair – which up until now had only, truly, involved Cee – she watched and _listened_ very, very closely.

They hadn’t known, but she had heard the quick, private exchange, that cycle.

A quick, breathy expulsion: _you’re my uncle._

* * *

Cee was immensely clever.

“I have to say, you offered quite the challenge, as far as case management goes.”

Ezra chuckled dryly.

It wasn’t really a thing of humor.

He’d only just returned from a very uncomfortable walk around the ward, urged on by a very, _very_ energetic nurse and an overly concerned Cee.

She had kept his secret, that he had tried to walk himself, high on painkillers, and had nearly eaten the floor.

It had clearly traumatized her for she had hovered something fierce, despite her own annoyance with the nurse.

The poor girl looked as though she had wanted to wring the poor man’s neck; it was somewhat comforting that she had found the administrations of Central as annoying as he did.

They’d run, dust-smoked, together through the Green, under fire; the hall wasn’t _intimidating_ by any stretch.

When the nurse had left – _good job, Mr. Ezra! -_ him to rest in front of the huge bay window, a small respite from the physical labor of recovery from a _near death_ , he’d looked at Cee, sweat-sheened, slouched, had said:

“I’m thinkin’, birdie – “ a full stop forced by breathlessness, “that we high-tail at the next … opportunity.”

Her lips had quirked up a bit, she’d rolled her eyes.

"Like I said. I don't listen to you."

And then the torture had continued.

Upon return to his room, he had collapsed into the large, very comfortable chair that some staff member had brought in.

He’d been intent on sitting there, imagined himself falling into a fatigued doze; he’d urged Cee to find something to do, had seen the eagerness in her expression, the bounce in her step that begged stimulation.

He’d been glad for it when she’d agreed, had grabbed her notebook and promised to return shortly.

He’d been comfortable for this first time that cycle when there was a soft knock, followed by the careful opening of the door.

Then the case manager, Filipa, had entered.

So, he was a bit exhausted, too tired to make nice, though he knew this woman hadn’t done anything to earn sore-tempered unpleasantness.

“Consider me well managed.” He had the _distinct_ feeling – _knowledge,_ Sanofi had implied as much - that he shouldn’t be alive so he figured he should be mighty grateful for their management of him. He was sure it had been a proper job.

He sure felt like he’d been through a terrible ringer, even now with a renewed ability to stay awake for longer bouts. It _still_ felt like the combined efforts of a hundred mean hangovers, too many lost brawls, and a very bad turn in the Green.

It was slightly disappointing that all this – all this pain and weakness and discomfort – was from a mere _one_ of those things.

“I’ve been looking forward to _actually_ meeting you, Ezra.”

Ezra wished he could say the same. He hadn’t known she existed until her first, surprising intrusion that first full day of wakefulness. Their interactions, up until now, had been immensely brief, had mostly involved him watching her interact with Cee.

“How are you feeling?”

“If you are amenable to honesty - ”

She nodded very amenably.

He closed his eyes for a moment, leaning his head back against the head of his bed. They had begun weaning him off the pain medication. It was _exhausting_ and it _hurt._ Not like it had hurt in the Black, but enough to make movement feel risky and for his body to operate overtime, doubling efforts to work through the many corporeal discomforts.

“ - I feel, and I apologize for the crassness, like the Green got the better of me – “ He opened his eyes again, tired gaze landing on this woman who, though well-dressed and glowing, also looked a bit worn.

“ – I feel like fuckin’ shit –“ Ezra admitted; it was the first time he’d voiced it, though he’d certainly been feeling it. With Cee he was _ok_ and _fine_ , with the doctor he was, _well enough._

Maybe he was spent.

Maybe the weight of his injuries, the near miss with death, the painful loss of his arm, the complete unknowing of what to do next, was bubbling to the surface this cycle.

Maybe he just needed to name the thing, voice it, so the phantom ache in his right arm would leave him, so the burn in his chest would ease.

It was the need for simple truths, an admission. He’d felt the same need for the simplicity of it back in that tent - _I need your help –_ the need for words uncolored by anything but the rawness of inconvenient truths.

“ – but that is just how it is, in the Black, Miss Filipa.”

“Filipa. Please.”

He huffed; he’d said the same, as much, to the doctor. He knew she meant it as much as she was also mirroring him, his affect, his behavior. All well-to-do Centralists seemed to do that.

“Filipa.” He nodded; he could acquiesce, could be as Centralian as he needed to be, for the time being.

“Even if that is true, I am still sorry to hear it, Ezra. It sounds … difficult in the Black,” she said it the same way people who’d never lived there always did; as though it were a destination, with emphasis it didn’t deserve, that didn’t make sense in context, “you two are … Floaters, then?”

“Fringeling.” Ezra said, though he wasn’t sure – didn’t care – if she knew there was a difference. To a Centralist, there may not have been. “Born and raised.”

If she had noticed that he had omitted Cee, she didn’t mention it.

“I see.” She said, paused. “And you’ll go back to the Fringe?”

She was searching, digging, he knew. It was her _job_ , data collection hidden under a saccharine kindness that was likely both genuine and a thing developed as a professional tool, all meant to make people _talk._

He didn’t mind playing a long. Didn’t mind feeding her mostly truths.

“Haven’t decided.” He said, which was true, though it wasn’t likely to be the plan. He hadn’t been to his home planet in a _very_ long time. He couldn’t imagine going back, though, he was replete of resources now.

He’d been laid low before. He’d been in want of points and direction many times in his youth. He’d been on the edge of destitution and discomfort more times than human fingers could tally, but he’d never taken such a terrible hit.

He’d never been so physically compromised.

“And how are you managing the amputation?” If he were to give credit where it was due, she did sound genuine, sounded mournful over it. As though he may have neglected to mourn it himself.

He had, _was._

It was a hard thing to learn, the loss of an appendage, a tool that had never been anything but there. It was constant; the need to reach, the grasp, to do simple, mindless things.

Anything offered was _wanted_ by his missing right arm.

Any physical sensation – small hurts, an itch, pain that needed intentional touch – _demanded_ to be soothed by his right hand.

Any errant thought over what to do next – prospecting or otherwise - _begged_ an answer for how he would compensate for the loss of not _only_ his right-handedness, but _also_ his ambidexterity.

It wasn’t the simple loss of a dominant side. It was the forfeiture of a rather complex physical agreement.

Ezra knew he could recover from it; he had no other choice but to do so. It was more a question of what made up the in-between: from _here_ to _there._

“You don’t need to concern yourself,” and he meant it; he wouldn’t be here much longer, didn’t intend to carve out any sort of plot in Central, “I am managing fine.”

She gave him a sad, irritating nod. The same he’d seen her give Cee when she said something _concerning_.

“There are programs, you know. For prospectors who need assistance, medical, housing, –“

The words grated _fiercely_. Perhaps his own stubbornness was making an appearance. Perhaps it was a thing of pride, but, his entire self-felt as though it were in recoil, flinching in utter _disgust_ at what she was suggesting.

In the Fringe, had they met – her as some roving, straight from Academy social worker, hungry to save the souls of the Fringe – he would have likely told her, with no tact or kindness, to _fuck off._

But, he was _in_ Central and he was not _only_ representing himself, now.

“That is an incredibly kind offer, Filipa, but I am afraid I must decline –“ He took a moment to breath; he was due for a miserable breathing treatment. He could see her forming a protest, so he gave a quick cough and continued.

“ – though we have not laid out a terminal plan for ourselves, it would be careless to abandon our prospects before properly considering them.”

His chest ached; _too much._

“Of course.” She said, her own voice taking on a tone of disinterest in the topic.

Ezra knew she could sense his disinterest in the suggestion, could tell that she had picked up the clear cue: that he loathed it.

Filipa paused, uncrossed, re-crossed her legs as she settled into a new position. Ezra could see the topic change broadcasted in the small movement.

He braced himself, fully aware this was a thing bound to happen.

She’d check in with him and had found herself satisfied, satiated.

Now:

“If you don’t mind, Ezra, I’d like to ask you about Cee.”

 _There it is_ , he thought.

Ezra wasn’t kip to the ways of Central. He’d been enough to _know_ enough, knew how to blend when necessary and to separate the same when in certain company. He wasn’t strange to the nuances of the culture which operated under a very specific, very refined veneer.

If asked by a Centralist his feelings concerning their home territories, he’d call it _resplendent_ , possibly, _refined as no other place to be found,_ and, if truly in need of pandering, _the true Center of all possibilities,_ ever mindful of the words born by the flag they hung over every damn thing:

_Order, Progress, Possibility, Unity._

If asked by a neutral party, and pressured, he’d comment, _a bit dry, bland_ , _but harmless,_ maybe, _decent if points are to be made_ , and, _a place you can find a decent drink and a forgettable lover for the night._

If asked by a being his true feelings, and if in good company, he’d say, _a monument to the superficial, replete of any good vice, and lacking in every aspect of what makes a life worth the hardship,_ and, _neutered and completely blind to any known realities thus experienced,_ or, if drunk, _a planet full of beings in need of a good and decent fuck_ , after which, loaded on drink, he would offer himself up as the man to do it.

So, when she asked, face graced with a kind, gentle smile, and a demeanor that any being would code as _harmless_ , Ezra knew he was about to be interrogated.

“Cee tells me you’re her uncle.” The woman said pleasantly, as though starting any old conversation. She offered him a cup of o’cha and he took it, placed it on the table.

He gave her a tight smile, one that didn’t quite make it to his eyes. He was far too tired for this. It raised his hackles, put him on alert. It was an energy he couldn’t afford.

“Is that a statement or a question?” Ezra said knowing _full well_ it was definitely, absolutely, a question.

Of course, Cee had told him as much in a breathless rush, an almost desperate attempt to get him caught up to too many cycles spent insentient.

And, you see:

That was the thing about Floaters and Fringlings: they knew the economy of information. A Centralist would call it, at best, an interest in gossip, and at worst, paranoia, but any good being that made a life in the Black understood the heavy weight of the purchasing power of _knowing._

Even angry at him, even believing he intended to abandon her, she’d shared vital information.

Filipa’s mouth quirked; Ezra knew it a thing half amused, half concerned about the direction of this conversation.

“She didn’t tell me much about what happened, but she seems to care about you, your recovery.”

The woman smiled pleasantly as she sat back, sipped from her steaming cup of what smelled like o’cha.

“Cee’s a good kid.”

“Hmm.” Filipa hummed in agreement, gave him a sad, little smile.

She tilted her head as though she were thinking, as though she were rifling through a mental box of questions, careful to select the right one, and spoke again.

“How long have you been looking after your niece?”

There was a long moment of silence while they stared at each other. Ezra didn’t feel any bend in her gaze, and he wasn’t particularly interested in skirting around any topics. He was _tired_ and _hurting_ and he knew _nuance_ when he heard it.

He took a breath, gave her a polite smile, an unthreatening little thing even though his eyes were hardened and serious.

“Now, I am going to ask you to speak plain. If you have something to ask, really ask, you ask it now.”

The only hint of discomfort was the bob of her throat as she swallowed, the way her gaze shunted away from him, downward, for the barest moment.

She cleared her throat. She still _smiled_ , though it was a small thing.

“How did you end up travelling with Cee?” Her demeanor didn’t much change, only _faded_ slightly into something that knew it was travelling into territory with the potential for danger, the emotional wilting of someone who was _very_ worried about what lay at the end of the path.

Ezra knew that, perhaps, this was a moment in which one should feel some measure of anxiety. That she was implying many unsavory things all at once.

He couldn’t much blame her.

She was a Centralist and the Black was an unimaginable, gaping expanse of horrors. The stories it produced were often the subject of bad dramas, poorly written stage-plays, and theses written by hungry, angsty humanitarians.

However, he knew he could not revise the past. He couldn’t change the events that had formed their meeting and their knowing of each other.

Ezra took a breath, fixed her with a serious, honest gaze as he leaned forward; the slightest encroachment of her space.

“Cee was orphaned on the Green. A job gone bad. Her father met some bad luck, and by proximity, so did she.” Ezra stated in a partial truth. He couldn’t make any real claim of her. She _wasn’t_ his by blood, by any form or relation of marriage, or, by Centralist-law. Stating so could have done more harm than good, though Cee couldn’t know it.

And, despite his preference for truthful talk, he wasn’t a fool.

This woman would not understand the way of it, the Black, the Green, that _none_ of it had been personal. That her father would have done just the same and that, in the final moments, it had all been an unfortunate, messy stand-off that had originated in an unlucky meeting of their paths.

He also knew that Central tended to extend itself well into and beyond the best interests of those in the Black; that, with its best _legal_ intentions, it could swallow the girl up.

“And you were there, on the Green Moon, for Aurelac?”

“There’s no other reason to be.” Ezra said, and though he knew it weren’t quite true, it was, in his opinion, the only reason he believed to be _rational_.

Filipa’s gaze lit up as though she were hearing something both wonderfully interesting and disturbing. It was how Centralists _always_ looked when they heard stories about the Black, the Fringe firsthand.

“And, Cee is a prospector?” She sounded confused and, to be fair, he’d shared some of the sentiment, though _wonder_ was more what he’d felt when he’d seen her, thrower held steady in a fear-struck advance.

“No, no, she is not.”

He could see her rising disgust, her concern.

“I don’t understand. Why was she on a job on the Green Moon?” He could understand this confusion as well; if he’d never seen it, in all his Green years, there was no chance she would have known of such a thing.

Outside of Sater culture, Sater _children_ , it was unknown, unheard of.

“Why would someone bring a child to the Green?”

He coughed over a humorless hitch, something that had been meant to be an incredulous laugh, because, _Centralists …_

“Have you ever visited the Fringe? The Green?” The questions seemed to catch her off guard; he hadn’t meant to pour as much distaste into the question as he had.

“Well, yes –“ She sputtered. She hadn’t been expecting the question.

Ezra was _good_ at that.

Beings thought his ways with speech, with communication ended with its unusual turn, it’s strange eloquence and verbosity. Rather, he was _immensely_ talented at pulling on the threads of truth, of yanking the edges of perspective into the open.

He was _very_ practiced in a unique form of verbal _manipulation_.

“Trips of good will?” He asked.

Ezra let his head tilt back against the back of the chair; the conversation was tiring, he felt like he was being forced into mounting a grand defense; a defense for himself, for Cee, for _Damon_ , for all beings unfortunate enough to depend on the Black, and only the Black, for the means required by living things.

The accusation broke through that ever-present smile, cracked its edges. Her face fell into a genuine neutral.

“Mm-hmm.” He nodded, understanding himself to be _correct._

“Research expeditions and well-meaning supply runs?” He tried again; she wore the title _researcher_ and _altruist_ and _sociologist_ on her sleeves.

He’d seen the efforts of altruistic supply runs: expired medications, stained clothing from the reaches of Central, food that seemed unfit for eating.

He’d seen researchers and their teams of very bright eyed, very fresh beings: flinching at the site of the unusual, awed at the visions of suffering – suffering that was, by his account, _common._

“Mm-hmm.” He hummed. Watched as her expression fell further into something self-aware, something that looked as though it had been _caught._

“I hate to be the one to orient you to reality, but - ” Ezra knew he had to be careful; he couldn’t do anything that would threaten Cee, couldn’t say something that would disturb this woman, as well educated and versed as she _clearly was._

 _“ -_ you only saw the face the Black wanted you to see. A little girl in the Green? That is a small thing.”

Her mouth quirked as she tilted her head, took a breath. He resisted the urge to give in to his own bodily need to cough. It had been building; he was damn tired.

She looked as though she were settling into new knowledge.

She looked as though she were giving up some formerly held beliefs, judgements of him.

She spent a long moment in silence, one he was happy to abide. He used the break to take replenishing breaths, to build strength he didn’t really have. He could sleep right there, on the spot.

“Okay. So, you took her in?” To her credit, her voice was only _slightly_ tinged with the color of disbelief.

It was as though, in all her research, time spent in the Black, she’d never heard of such a thing.

“In a manner of speaking.” By no Centralian means would he call it that – _taking her in_ – it had been survival for several long, exhausting cycles. Had turned into dependency across a couple more. Developed into genuine appreciation for each other’s company through what he’d thought had been the end days, and then, upon waking, confirmed to be a genuine and true thing, bonafide.

“Is that commonplace in the Fringe?” She looked as though she could _devour_ it, this information.

“I wouldn’t rightly know.” Perhaps it was. Orphaned things like her – like him, even, though it had been a good and long time – were as common as channel rats. They popped up from every crevasse, died or didn’t.

And, though he’d made the initial offer, it was her who had sealed the agreement.

He thought about how she’d made two stubborn returns; the first accidental, the second a thing of stubborn intention.

“Though, given my condition … it would be more appropriate to say that she took _me_ in.”

He’d never forget the _genuine_ surprise, the shock, when he’d seen her small figure racing back through those darkened woods, _towards_ him.

He’d never forget the _confusion_ when she’d hooked him back to her filter and, without any word of warning, hit him with that horribly painful injection of foam, the one that had gone _deep_ into his wound for her inability to see it properly in their haste. He’d been rendered speechless.

He’d never forget that he’d been _grateful_ , even in the haze of his wordless pain, when she’d managed to get him on his feet _and_ shoulder some of his weight all the way to the ship.

Filipa looked as though she were in deep thought, consuming the information he’d only just shared and cross-examining it with what she, herself, knew.

“We weren’t sure whether to believe her when she said _she_ was the one to amputate your arm. It sounded a little … unbelievable.”

For a moment this woman looked like a child, brow knit in fascination, a naïve expression of wonder on her pristine features.

She hadn’t a single wrinkle, Ezra noticed. Not a single hair out of place.

“That’s the Fringe, miss, and she did indeed.” In a streak of frustration over the ignorance of Centralists like her, he felt as though he needed to defend Cee.

If only they knew the extent of her administrations, of her abilities.

“She did a good job of it, too, though I do not wish to repeat the experience.” And that was one-hundred-percent truth. If there were to be a very cruel _next time_ , he would have her shoot him right between the eyes.

Neither of them could bear a second go, and he wasn’t about to make a living _no-armed_ ; he had to draw a line with that bitch fate _somewhere._

“I’m sure.” She said and she seemed satisfied for a moment.

She leaned back to take a sip of her o’cha, her brows knit ever so slightly. After a momentary silence she shook her head. It stretched between them, comfortable, as though they’d come to an understanding.

He could have fallen asleep in the gap it provided.

“I was going to say,” she started, as though realizing many things at once, “I didn’t see the resemblance. At all. But she clearly cared about you, didn’t seem afraid of _you_ , so I trusted her.”

She said it as though she were given to some pride over her gut-instincts.

Ezra was quietly grateful that she hadn’t done Cee wrong, that she hadn’t interrogated the poor girl over her suspicions, that she’d been able to deduce that there hadn’t been something malignant and dangerous between them.

Cee, likely, had had no idea.

“I kept an eye on her, though.” She said it sternly, out of nowhere, as if to say, _I still don’t understand,_ and, _I’m still not sure I trust you._

Ezra couldn’t help but chuckle, even though it made his chest hurt. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had taken that tone with him; it was more familiar than anything else she’d offered.

“And I am grateful for it.” Ezra said it with sincerity, his voice dropping; he did.

He had felt a genuine rush of _relief_ when he’d first learned, understood that she hadn’t been left to her devices, that she hadn’t been left to fend on the side of some busy Centralist pedestrian pathway.

He had expected one of two things of their arrival on Central: one, that he would be dead by arrival and wouldn’t know a thing about it, or, two, that he’d be conscious and alert enough to guide them through the unique challenges Central _never_ failed to present to beings like them.

He had, _not once,_ imagined some grey in-between.

He had so long been used to fending for himself and only himself - with the occasional exception, of course, of the need to consider, to care about an orbiting prospecting partner, as required in the Green – that he hadn’t any mind to help Cee plan for such a thing.

He’d only thought to provide her with financial recompense and had called it complete, had considered her looked after should he die. If he were being truly honest, he hadn’t thought he’d have any terminal role in her life.

More importantly:

He hadn’t thought she would stick around.

This burgeoning relationship was an odd, fragile thing. It had grown from the roots of a very real and deep trauma; he still worried that she didn’t understand what she was choosing whilst simultaneously understanding he _had_ to trust her.

And, of course.

He’d never imagined himself bonded, in partnership, with some child; a girl child at that. He’d naught the skills for it, the mind. Anyone who knew him – had known him, who he’d been, who he _was_ \- would _laugh_ , would refuse to believe it.

He understood Filipa’s hesitation. He imagined he would feel the same; _suspicious._

He truly didn’t believe himself to be in possession of the faculties to do right by her. He spent some time wondering over it, what they were meant to do, what she may want.

Filipa sipped the last of her o’cha, said:

“She’s good for you, it seems.”

He wasn’t completely sure how she’d arrived at that conclusion, but, then again, he’d been unconscious for a long while. Had been unaware of whatever dramas had played out for so many cycles.

She didn’t say the same about him, didn’t suggest it was an _equal_ exchange; that he was good for her.

He couldn’t help but think that maybe he _did_ like her – Filipa - just fine.

The large, bright sun was in its setting phase, filling the room with orange light. The silence stretched, a near companionable thing.

Any tension between them died.

His own by the exhausted pull of a body in need of rest and a conflict wilted, browned and dead.

Hers by the arrival of an evening glow that revealed former truths in a new light, by the satisfaction of a story finally told.

Something small came to him; a minor thing amongst all their needs.

“If you are willing, I have a favor to ask.”

She turned her head, smiled in the evening-glow. 

* * *

Cee was sleeping.

It provided a good opportunity for Ezra to attempt his long-held want for using the refresher _alone_ , without someone helping him to it, without someone minding the time he’d spent in it.

He wasn’t a particularly vain man, nor was he one who strove at all times for the pinnacle of hygiene – impossible in the Black and the Green – but the idea of standing under hot water, or to scrub his face was near irresistible.

Though he was clean he felt impossibly grime covered. It was not the grime of travel or time spent in an environment-suit, but rather that of immobility, of staying in one place too long, of being limited to fast bed baths, the only dignity being that they let him do it himself.

Ezra _knew_ he wasn’t supposed to make such aggressive attempts at ambulating _alone_ , but his strength was recovering, his legs were steady. It was now more a thing of endurance rather than strength.

Of course, he wasn’t one for inaction and though he still felt tired with even a half-cycle’s effort, weary to the bones by the end of it, he was fairly confident he could manage the small task.

Some self-protective pocket of his mind tried to remind him of his previous attempt in the Black, the one that had had him sitting on the craft’s freezing floor, dozing, but he dutifully ignored it.

But.

He would prove himself right; the trip to the refresher was short, _easy._ He’d managed the trip quietly, with only a small hitch in his step. He’d passed Cee without waking her. It felt like the first real hint of actualized recovery.

The mirror in the refresher, however, disagreed.

He stood in front of it, hand resting on the water basin, holding some of his weight.

The dark bruises under his eyes were the first thing he’d noticed; he looked as though he were recovering from some hideous, losing brawl. He looked as exhausted as he’d been feeling, which was, in a way, comforting. He would have been surprised and discomfited if he’d found a version of himself in that reflection, brimming with the appearance of health.

To himself he appeared gaunt, thin; he imagined there was some truth to it. He hadn’t been keeping up on his normal nutrition, hadn’t been able to, and whatever they’d done to keep him physically nourished had only _just_ done the job. Though, of all things, it would be easy to regain the weight, to rebuild muscle. It was the least of his worries, even if it had turned his appearance into something tired, struggling.

The worst, by far, was the absence of his right arm. He hadn’t _seen_ it yet; hadn’t seen it reflected back at him. He’d only been able to look from the natural view afforded all beings, had only been able to view it from the shoulder down, to see where his shoulder became arm and then abruptly ended.

He looked unbalanced; his body already learning to shy away from the right-sided weakness. It was disorienting, the look of it. It was the kind of thing that repulsed, the kind of thing he wanted to turn a blind eye too.

It wasn’t a thing of vanity, rather, it was a physical reminder, a reality, that could not be buried or avoided. He would have to relearn _everything._

_Everything._

Written word. Weapons, though he was proficient left-handed with a thrower; anything else he was moderately skilled. Movements of the fine-motor persuasion; he could hold utensils, could grasp and aim and do all that was expected of a working hand, but the _fine_ things … they were difficult, felt awkward.

He wouldn’t be able to _feel_ the fine thing that warned of an impending sac-breach when harvesting Aurelac.

He wouldn’t be able to both lift the casing of a control panel and rotate his wrist, commanding the impossibly small drivers into stripping screws and bolts.

He wouldn’t be able to take on the difficult, careful work of rewiring those complex arrays in ships and pods and other machines in order to fix or operate or steal them.

He wouldn’t be able to fight the way he used to. Every physical altercation would be a risky thing, all his weight now being thrown from one side with little to counterbalance it. It would be dangerous, for a long time, to get into such dealings.

He wouldn’t be able to protect Cee as he’d promised in the Green. He’d meant two things when he’d made the offer, the first being that of physical safeguarding. He was stronger than her, more learned and experienced in fight-craft, more confident with a thrower, a blade. The second was still intact, the communication skills that turned a being in a circle, that coerced and leveraged things in his favor.

But the Black … the Green, it demanded _both_.

Ezra shook his head, unimpressed.

He wouldn’t be able to cut his own damn hair.

He looked at the messy mop on his head; it hadn’t grown much but it hadn’t seen any form of grooming since before the whole ordeal. It looked as though it had been bed-tussled, fever-slicked, and helmet-smothered for too many cycles.

Maybe he _could manage_ that. It would be a messy job, probably an ugly one.

Ezra sighed, taking a final look, swallowed against the thing inside him that _mourned._

There was nothing for it now.

He stripped himself of the scrub top – his outfit, uniform, since his arrival. He gave the scar on his abdomen only a cursory glance. It surprised him how innocuous it had turned out; a thin slice of pink that looked as though it would fade into silver-white, similar to the one on his cheek.

He removed the brace from his shoulder; the rush of blood from the sudden loss of compression causing a surprising amount of discomfort, awakening the phantom pain that seemed to come and go.

He ignored it, tried to.

Then the scrub pants, socks, the easiest of all the undressing.

Ezra stepped into the showering space, turning the water on as he entered; it ran hot immediately, a genuine luxury and one he’d forgotten. Central, he knew, did have its comforts.

The steam bothered his lungs, as did the vaguely perfumed scent – a camphoric fragrance – of the hair scrub. It set him into a low cough, manageable but irritating. It reminded him of time spent on Ecud – he was miserably allergic to the blooming season of their famed roisin plant.

He lathered himself, one armed, found it only slightly awkward, only slightly painful as his body tried to recruit muscles that were no longer there.

He was quick about it, the whole affair lasting mere minutes.

He put the scrub-clothing back on before he was even dry, knew he’d spent the reserves of his energy. It was hard, getting the top over and on while his brain told him to pull the right arm through the sleeve, while it told him to grip the hem.

He decided to forgo the socks, lest be become more frustrated, more filled with disappointment and ire for _himself_.

He had a long way ahead, many cycles to become acquainted with this new version of himself.

He’d take them in privacy, these new lessons; he’d take help, when he could, but these finer private things would have to be learned alone.

Ezra’s wet feet slapped across the floor in a slow shuffle. It felt good to be clean – actually clean – and to have taken personal stock, but he’d had enough.

With a groan, and a huffy cough he settled back into his bed, his last thoughts of this Central night-hour mired by uncharacteristic uncertainty.

* * *

Cee was restless.

Ezra couldn’t blame her; he felt similarly, ready to move on, even though …

The conversation of _where next_ settled between them, unspoken and un-had, like a particularly bad taboo.

Ezra knew they were both avoiding it, though for different reasons.

Cee, because she was unsure of when to broach the subject, because she had likely spent plenty of time while he’d been unconscious thinking about _it_.

Ezra, because he couldn’t see their options. Not yet.

Despite his interactions with Sanofi, with Cee, he knew he was still _unwell._

He still struggled to move, to ambulate the corridors without coughing, without feeling breathless and a little lightheaded when he pushed.

Small fevers spiked for seemingly no reason; if he moved too much that cycle, if he slept too long, if he coughed too frequently.

At least his wounds had been set on the right course; the wound in his abdomen was all but closed, thanks to the superior attention he’d been afforded. His _residual limb_ , as they’d called it – stump, he called it – was healing well.

They’d fit him with a black sleeve and stabilizer, protecting the reduced appendage and keeping his shoulder supported. It was only vaguely annoying; the strap stretched across his chest chafed just enough to be irritating. He figured he’d just have to get used to it. It was to be a permanent part of his wardrobe.

But, despite the drawl of his recovery, he knew – Cee knew - they needed some form of _plan_ , lest Filipa attempt, again, to install them into some project of altruism _._

Finally, unable to take her own mind’s ramblings – Ezra could see it in her twitchiness, the way her jaw moved over inner thoughts – Cee suggested they brainstorm.

“Not here, though.” She’d said, _tired_ of it.

Now.

They were both reclining on the Observation Deck – a place Cee had been eager to share as the weather took a brilliant turn – looking, for all the Black, like planet-side _tourists._

Faces pointed toward the sun, skin warming to the bones, bodies still and comfort-limp; Ezra imagined it was the most relaxing either of them had ever done in both of their lives.

“After this, we’ll have two points.” She said without adjusting her gaze, eyes on the notebook she held above her, back laid straight against cool stone, book setting a shadow over her face.

Ezra grunted; he’d had, so he believed, around five, or just under before _this,_ as Cee had called it.

Two points wouldn’t get them very far. A pod cost one and unless they were to make an immediate journey to the Green, they’d have little to no means of fiscal replenishment. They’d hardly be able to cover supplies – most of which he’d left back on the Green.

He had considered finding temporary employ in Central, but there were few positions for former Aurelac prospectors, even less for a one-armed man, and next to none that would actually create any meaningful gain.

Staying in Central would be a terminal thing; they’d never be able to leave, would likely end up in some damaged subdivision, all efforts being poured into the earning of impossibly small denominations.

Even if Cee found a way to contribute, it would be a meagre thing. She was unregistered. She was uneducated, formally. She had none of the skills expected of a young Centralian.

He’d be dooming them to a life of immense banality, of a different but equivalent kind of struggle. They would have more _choice_ , more access to material things, to nutrition, but they’d still be bound by whatever lay in their account.

They’d be able to rely on some form of social and cultural infrastructure, but they would be forced, expected, to conform to it.

Ezra was a killer. He’d done incredibly awful things, by Centralian standards, despite the humble beginnings of his youth. He’d, more than often, chosen the rough path over the “right” one. By Fringe standards he was a man deemed commonplace.

Here?

He had _no_ place here.

And Cee … if she’d in any way signaled that _this_ was what she wanted he would try to facilitate it. Lucky for him – a selfish thing inside him was _relieved_ – Cee seemed, by no manner, by no perceivable action or spoken word, interested.

If anything, she seemed to share his general distaste, despite the fact that it was because of Central’s intervention that he was still _alive._ It did not preoccupy him, his thoughts; he was wizened enough to know you could benefit from a thing and still hold it in disdain.

And, of course, they remained who they were: Fringeling and Floater.

For many Fringelings and Floaters this life was considered a thing worse than a life made in the Black.

Two points.

“A pod?” She offered, as though picking through his own thoughts.

“Maybe. But I must warn, it is a very temporary solution without a plan for earnings, birdie.” Ezra said into the warmth of the sun; it felt good, stilled the aching of his body.

He knew she knew this truth, regarding earnings. She’d told him about how she and Damon had lived, job to job. It was what that life required; constant employ broken only by travel.

Silence took.

He _knew_ in that moment that they were both thinking the same thing: _the Queen’s Lair_.

He _knew_ they wouldn’t bring it up, yet. Not until they were off Central; until he was a little _better._

“Passenger freighter?” Ezra cringed at the idea of being crammed into a 500-being transport rig; they were often under-supplied, poorly managed, rarely cleaned, and nearly every journey boasted viral outbreak.

He’d take the aimless drifting of a pod over _that._

Sensing Cee was becoming frustrated, he softened the blow.

“Need a destination. It would be planet-side and only so.” It would put them back into this exact situation, with less points and the same need to conform to the standards of wherever they went.

“Why don’t _you_ come up with something then?” She snapped, body shifting position to look at him. He opened one eye, squinting against the sun, stared back.

He had to remind himself that she’d spent her entire life being _dragged_ from one end of the Black to the other, that she’d never been a participant in the choosing of travel destinations, in the efforts of planning it.

She must have felt terribly aimless, especially now that his recovery was a more certain thing.

She must have felt oddly purposeless, on top of _all_ the rest.

“Your propositions are sound, Cee, I am not in disagreement with them – “ Ezra started, knowing that early mitigation of their small misunderstandings was the best course of action.

“ – but we have _some_ time. Can’t rush a thing this important.”

She looked unmoved; he imagined her father had said similar things in the past, though stated differently.

She shifted again, curling into a cross-legged slouch, elbows resting on her knees, hand bracing her cheek. Her notebook was splayed open next to her, he could make out the scribblings of numbers, calculations.

“It would be better than the rock jumper.”

Ezra sat up, wincing slightly at the abruptness of it. He looked at her, then at the ground, off into the distance, over the buildings, thinking.

_That’s it._

The rock jumper.

That horrible piece of shit, that mess of hardly-together machinery, bare-boned and lacking in every way.

It would have been moved from their landing parcel, stored in some hangar. It would likely incur some fee to exact its return, but it would be a small price to pay for a working ship, one he’d had no particular claim to in the first place.

Even better, it was unlikely to have been registered to any particular being. The mercenaries that once commandeered it wouldn’t have gone through any particular processes to legalize it through Central.

“What, you okay?” Cee leaned into his space, worried.

He grinned at her.

“Birdie, your brilliance knows no end.”

It was theirs for the taking.

* * *

Cee was getting their midday nutrition.

And, of course.

The doctor returned. He’d gotten wind, Ezra expected, of their intention to leave.

It was as if they knew when she was to be absent, when it was safe to hold one-on-one dialogues with this volatile prospector. When they would be free of her too young gaze, the too immature attention of a _child._

If only they _knew._

Sanofi told him, in no uncertain terms or catch of phrase, that they intended to watch him for another five full cycles.

Ezra thought, in no uncertain terms or catch of phrase, that there was no way in _hell_ that was happening.

The doctor had started with a benign form of professionalism; detached, understanding, but firm.

“Though I’m glad to see you are awake, your saturation is still unstable.” He’d said with a stiff smile-adjacent expression.

To which Ezra had responded, with a similar smile, “I’ll be sure to take it very easy - ”

He feigned an intentional pause, a collection of his thoughts to avoid giving in to the building need to cough.

“ – there’s no need to spend your _very_ valuable time watching me act the lay about.”

Sanofi shook his head, as though Ezra wasn’t getting it.

“You average 94%, at rest.” The man tried to throw the data, the facts at him. He was tired of hearing about how often he _desaturated_ ; Sanofi had told him this would happen. Surely, they didn’t need to witness more of the same for five additional cycles.

“I assure you. I will not be making a habit of it.” He said it over a wheeze. He’d talk softer, more sparingly.

Sanofi switched tactics.

“We have a lot of experience with diseases and illnesses suffered in your line of work. You’re not our first Prospector.” He said, trying to appeal to his vocation, as though it would _comfort_ him, as though he were concerned about their ability to understand his needs.

“And I have no doubt.” Ezra had started with a shake of his head before unleashing a lengthy, wheezing tirade regarding a Prospector he’d known who’d suffered one of the _most_ impressive cases of Green Gangrene he’d ever seen; how it had started in his pinky toe and travelled all the way to his nethers, how he’d lost all that the rot had touched – _all_ of it – and, _you ever seen anything like that?_

And he had only coughed for a brief, fleeting fit for its entire duration.

It was a complete filibuster, and he could see the man losing the last shreds of his patience.

By the end he had frustrated the man to a point of the kind of truth-talking that earned you _respect_ in the Black. He knew, however, on Central, the man had just reached the limits of his professionalism.

“You should be dead.” All the softness he’d used with Cee, had used with _him_ in the first cycles, were completely absent from the conversation.

It was the voice of a man who’d seen _too_ many like him and had been unsuccessful in bridging the differences that set them on such severe disagreement, on such stubbornness.

“You have a long road ahead of you. You lost a limb. Whatever you were stabbed with missed your spine by a millimeter.”

He had nothing in particular to say to Sanofi’s statement. It wasn’t very compelling, wasn’t particularly _new_ information. He had not expected to make it through the whole ordeal as it were. He hadn’t expected, at a certain point, to make it off the Green.

“That’s how it goes in the Black.” Ezra said. This man was ridiculous and unknowing. People lost limbs, got shot and stabbed, and kept on. They didn’t languish in bed hoping they felt better.

And, Ezra _was_ feeling better. He was _lucky_. Had he received treatment in the Black, on some junker station or under-resourced planet, he would have likely ended up far worse. Would have lost more than what he had, more of his arm, would have been forced to bear fevers and infection for sidereal _weeks._

Sanofi gave him a stern look.

“You have permanent lung damage.” He continued, and it took some willpower for Ezra to not scoff at that, because, yes, he _knew_ that to be true. Not only had the man already told him, but Ezra was living it.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever take a satisfying breath ever again.

It didn’t help his case when the mere thought of his breathlessness made him cough, made his chest tighten in a way he associated with an acute exposure to dust. It was similar to how it had felt when that mercenary, Inumon, had purged his suit of oxygen, leaving him choking.

Feeling it here, on Central, was disconcerting.

The coughing eased but he couldn’t help but wince over the pain it sent into his chest and his right side, the not-there-arm.

Sanofi looked wholly unimpressed.

“You need time. Rehabilitation.” For his shoulder, he knew, and his breathing drive, so Filipa had already told him. He’d nodded politely, then, unwilling to inspire wrath in the woman who had kept such close tabs on Cee.

“I’m very capable of following directions –“ his voice was annoyingly hoarse again, inspired no particular faith in anyone regarding his personal assessments over his capacity.

“ - you send me out with some reading material, in Basic or otherwise, and it will be in good hands. Hand, excuse me.”

Sanofi crossed his arms; he looked as though he were reading between some very obvious lines, suspicion at its peak.

“You understand,” He started, and Ezra already didn’t like the tone; it was that of a man who thought the subject of his beratement was too stupid for their own good, “that you can’t go back to the Green Moon.”

 _The Green Moon_ , thought Ezra. No one, not any being who had been there, at least, called it t _he Green Moon._

“Gotta make a living somehow, doc. I’m sure you understand that –“

He had to take a deep breath, had to temper the man he could be, at times, the one that wanted to intimidate.

“ - what it would do to a man in my position to forgo such an opportunity. We can’t all make it on Central.” He said in what he assumed was a knee-jerk defiance; they weren’t going to head into the Green with such immediacy, even though the Queen’s Lair stilled _called_ from a part of himself that lurked just under his surface, in that part that remained unlearned by his traumas; a hungry, old thing.

He’d never seen _anything_ like it.

His long-winded response, though cut into pieces he’d thought manageable, left him breathless.

He did his best not to show it.

Sanofi glanced to the right, where he knew his oxygen levels to be; the shake of the larger man’s head suggested the display had fully betrayed him, revealed how winded he was.

“Another exposure to the toxic air, the _dust_ ,” he said as though it was demeaning to stoop to a prospector’s phrasing, “could kill you. Even a single exposure.”

The man’s eyes softened for the barest moment and Ezra knew, immediately, whatever followed was going to be poorly received. That the man was about to make a saccharine, Centralist attempt at creating some stir of change of heart.

“Think of your niece.”

Ezra took a sharp inhale of breath; it caught in his throat, hitched in his chest.

The violent man inside him stirred, tempered only by the logic of knowing one’s circumstances.

“Though I _am_ appreciative of your help, what you’ve done,” Ezra had to pause to cough and it was more than slightly demeaning,” I will ask you to refrain from making presumptions.”

It was all the more frustrating for this man’s ignorance to the nature of their relationship – his and Cee’s.

He knew this man thought him to be a bit of a vagabond, a scoundrel – which was true – but he believed him _also to_ be, effectively, _Damon_.

That was a thing he did not feel he could abide, though he didn’t feel any real ire towards the now dead man.

But.

This man likely thought him responsible for every sad part of Cee. Those behavioral things Centralists could see; the ones Fringelings and Floaters _couldn’t_ , the things they didn’t consider problematic.

A toughness unbefitting a child.

A predilection for confrontation and rudeness.

A quality of terminal withdrawal from what was deemed _normal society_ and its oh so delicious conventions _._

That was what he thought, this doctor.

He could see it in the way his expression fell from pleasant to worried when something melancholic and sad gripped Cee, putting her into a more pensive state.

He could see it in the way the man glanced at him when Cee was short, when she was moved so easily toward fits of uncouthness.

He could see it _now_ ; the doctor’s words had hardened over the word _niece_ , his face had fallen expressionless, stone-like, when Ezra had rebutted his attempt at connecting with him.

He could see the flash of anger in the man’s eyes, tempered only by his professionalism and a genuine, clinical concern – though, it was certainly being challenged at the moment – for his health.

“There are other means, less dangerous ones, especially for _children._ You _cannot_ go back. It _will_ kill you.”

Whatever caustic reply was forming on Ezra’s lips - some scathing protest against that ridiculous Centralist belief that, before all beings, lay richly-imagined, promising futures – was forced into remission at the sound of the door sliding open.

Cee wandered into the room, hands full and expression content.

The two meals were still steaming, the rich aroma filling the room immediately. Ezra couldn’t remember the last time he had an actual meal and was surprised at how sharply his stomach twisted at the sight, and smell.

It was almost enough to make him forget the tension he and the doctor had built between them.

_Almost._

The room was thick with it; the strain of two men who didn’t much _like_ each other but were forced into cordiality.

Ezra’s gaze flashed towards Sanofi’s, his message clear. _Not a word._

The doctor seemed to agree and, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, allowed a bright smile to return to his features as he turned to greet the girl.

“Good Afternoon, Cee. I was just talking to your uncle. I hear you two are leaving soon.”

Cee’s movements slowed as she set the food down, her eyes darting over at Ezra, suspicion painting her features. Ezra couldn’t help but grin; he was especially pleased when the doctor turned to look at him, his brows turned upward in small confusion over whatever was passing between them.

That smile wavered, just enough.

It further confirmed his suspicions that Sanofi had not encountered many teenagers like Cee; it was especially enjoyable to watch him stand, clasp his hands in what Ezra knew to be a tell for discomfort, when Cee didn’t return the greeting. Didn’t confirm or deny his suspicions.

“What’s for lunch?” The man asked.

“Yeah, birdie, what’s for lunch?” Cee rolled her eyes and Ezra knew his mockery had come across as intended. Ezra groaned as he leveraged himself, leaning at the waist and standing _slowly_ , from the chair. He’d had a rather aggressive session of physical therapy that morning.

 _Kevva_ , recovery was a slow bitch.

“Jalut cuts with pol’ta grain,” she looked over the food as though she could have forgotten, “and Salqui juice. It’s sweet. You’d like it.”

Sanofi stepped out of his way, watched the interaction between them. Ezra tried not to give in the urge to allow his step to hitch in compensation for the ache in his right side. He didn’t need to give the man a reason to medically _detain_ him.

He made it to the table. He even pulled out his own chair with _ease_. He felt obnoxiously _proud_ that he’d managed such a feat in the company of these two _very_ critical sets of eyes.

“You joining us, _doc_?” Ezra said as he sat, slow enough to keep from jarring his overworked muscles, but fast enough to not appear pained.

Sanofi’s glance flitted between them, their meals; he gave a kind shake of dissent.

“I’ll leave you both to it. Enjoy.” He smiled warmly at Cee and, without another word, turned.

“Thank you.” Ezra said as he watched him leave. He knew he was being more than his rightful share of _difficult_ but Central always did that to him; irked him, made him feel caged. He was already in a position of deep vulnerability, so, none of it sat well with him particularly well.

He imagined if it weren’t for Cee, he would have left in the first instance of his waking. Would have stumbled, sick-drunk, to the nearest transpo-station and rode until it reached its final destination.

“Be nice to him. He saved your life.” Cee said, her tone dry. She was _far_ too mature for her age, something they didn’t seem to notice; or rather, they had, and _that_ was the problem.

“I am _very_ nice to him. You missed a very _nice_ , courteous conversation, little bird.” She would have been appalled.

“What did he say?” She looked up from her food, her expression guarded; she did that when she was worried, he knew, and though he could read the expression through the apparent muteness of it, he knew it is what unnerved Filipa and Sanofi.

He looked at her, the way her hands hovered over her meal waiting for the answer.

And, before Ezra could _really_ think about it, he _lied_.

Later, it would shock him, how easily it had come. How he’d never let loose such a torrent of deceit with someone he’d considered important.

He would realize, quickly, in his recollections of the moment, that it was because he hadn’t wanted to _scare_ her.

He hadn’t worried about such things in the Green – had been blunt about what the mercenaries would and could do, about the way of the Green – but something had changed and all he had wanted to see, in that moment, was the rigidness of her shoulders release, the concern from her eyes drain.

“Well, he told me all about his experiences with the _illness_ and _diseases_ suffered by _poor_ Prospectors like myself.”

A small smile lifted at her lips and Ezra couldn’t help but smile along with her.

“He told me I was in glowing health.” He continued as her smile grew larger, even as she rolled her eyes over a large bite of her Jalut.

He held back a cough; the steam of the food was enough to irritate his already bothered lungs. Though he had been channeling Cee and had been exerting a powerful, illogical stubbornness, he understood, he did; his lungs weren’t in good shape, wouldn’t be for a long time, if ever.

“You’re such a liar.” Her mouth was full as she spoke, as she smiled over her food; the whole of it made her look young, her age, for once.

“How dare you.” He coughed, slightly; nothing that would set him off. “Is that any way to talk to your _Uncle._ ”

It had the desired reaction.

“Ugh. Are you ever going to shut up about that?”

“Hmm.” He grunted non-committedly as he stabbed his utensil into the Jalut; it smelled incredible and reoriented him to a very human need gone long ignored. It was a far cry from what he’d been subsisting on for the sidereal months he’d been in the Black and, then, on the Green.

They ate in companionable silence. Ezra was pleased to find that the meal settled well, that the hunger hadn’t been false and his stomach hadn’t been feeling riotous. He tried the Salqui juice, wasn’t surprised to find Cee had been correct; it was good.

It was Cee who would break the silence, her meal finished.

“So, you’re okay? He said you were okay to leave?” Cee asked clearly, as though requesting a conversation unimpeded by over-eloquence, flowery speech, witticisms. He knew she assumed his honesty, as they’d always been so with each other.

Honest.

“I’m fine, better than.” He said, then, with a turn of his brow, just as he’d done when he’d promised her even-split.

Another lie:

“You have my word.”

Much, _much_ later, he would realize that being an honest man was _easy_ when you hadn’t a being in the universe to care for.

* * *

A compromise.

Ezra and Sanofi would, finally, reach an understanding.

It was flimsy and built mostly on the desire to be out of each other’s hair in permanency, but it held enough healthy respect to allow it to be productive.

“Two more cycles.” Sanofi had come into the room as he’d been stepping out of the refresher, clean scrubs clinging to wet skin. It was getting easier – _everything_ was getting easier, finally.

“You have yourself a deal.” He could do two cycles; it gave them time to put costs on paper, to plan under the pressure of an actual deadline.

When he told Cee her eyes lit into something relieved.

They both needed to move on.

* * *

Cee truly _was_ brilliant.

The observation deck, it turned out, was a good place for working.

Though, it would be thoughtless and unfair to Cee to call what _he_ was doing, _working._ Rather, he was observing. Cee had borrowed a data pad from Filipa and was now putting her thoughts to the pen.

 _He_ was enjoying the warmth of the sun and an unusual respiratory reprieve; his lungs had been quiet this cycle, his chest free of that burning pain.

His right side still hurt, still throbbed in a way nothing else in his body did, tried to win his attention. He eased his left hand over his tight shoulder muscles, tried to ease the pain down.

Ezra watched as she finished, her eyes scanning the page.

She had catalogued the things she believed they would need. Not mechanical, that was _his_ job, it required experience and the knowing of all manners of craft; she’d displayed some knowledge in the Green, but it was still clear she didn’t know enough.

With a nod she presented the list.

The first thing he noticed was the nutrition.

“I have to say, little bird, your palate is refined.” Cycles spent eating _well_ had certainly made an impression with her.

There were items on there he didn’t know or had seldom tried mixed in with the usual, the mainstays – BIT Bars, hydrators, salts. There were dehydrated juices, rich proteins, grains he’d never thought to stock. There was a box of moc-cucão.

He smiled, a bit, at that.

There were slurry packs for their suits.

There were multiple filter refresher packs, along with four new air filtration units. There was a new hook-up kit, should they ever need to share a filter.

There was a Thrower – an older model, a Boscelot Frontiersman – and a new sight. Cartridges.

Ezra couldn’t help the small rush of surprise when he saw the Aurelac kit. The chem bottles. Two Ralon Crusader scalpels.

She, like him, anticipated a return; he imagined that conversation could wait for when they made it back to the Black.

There was clothing; basic, simple, meant for a life spent in the Black. He’d leave it to her to choose what she wished, wouldn’t deny her choice and, if she were want, fashion.

He’d manage with whatever was standard, whatever was easiest. He’d lived most his life in flight-suits, in the uncomplicated undergarments hidden underneath. He’d waste no thought on it.

Finally, one of the more expensive calculations, a single item for 0.3 FCP: a field kit. It was more lavish, more complete than anything he knew of. He’d never seen advertised a kit of such expense; he couldn’t imagine where Cee had seen it, where she may have heard about it, though he guessed Filipa may have helped.

It was, after all, likely to be professional grade at that price.

He needn’t think too hard on why she had selected it, on why she had prioritized and item so necessary for good form and health.

Ezra knew she’d been frustrated by their limitations to care for his ills in the Black, knew it had left her feeling lacking.

 _This_ was _probably_ an overreaction but, if she judged it necessary, if it brought her comfort in their future in the Black, he trusted her decision, accepted its opulence.

She watched him, carefully, while he finished his perusal the list.

It was all reasonable, all possible. It was sustainable. The small denominations added nicely, left them with just over a single point.

By Ezra’s count, it would be enough to make small repairs on the rock jumper, to fill in some of the minutia. He’d done more with less.

“You did good, Cee.” He said in earnest, the sparseness of his words intending to meet her directly; he knew she responded best to intentional words formed in sparse sentences.

He looked it over again, nodded, impressed. He patted her on the shoulder, could see her warm under the praise – a small thing, a simple quirk of a small – and handed it back to her.

“You don’t need to add anything?” She sounded surprised, as though she’d been berated in the past for items missed.

“We’ll survey the rock jumper, make the appropriate additions then. Otherwise, I have to say, I believe our preparations are in capable hands.”

She nodded, her competence shining.

“Go ahead and facilitate the order. We will give them the coordinates later.” He said, not at all surprised when she responded with silence, a vague expression of surprise coloring her face.

She looked as though she wanted to argue _against_ it, her own abilities.

Ezra was pleased to see that she thought better of it.

Instead, Cee nodded, smiled something pleased and satisfied.

“I got it.”

* * *

Cee was ready.

They both were.

So, when the second bargained day came, and Doctor Sanofi kept his word, Ezra felt a rush of genuine _gratitude._

He knew he was not fully recovered, not by their standards, not to the capacity they considered reasonable, but he was fully confident that he could manage the rest of the work on his own.

Even though his right side burned and pained him most cycles, even though the breathlessness never resolved for extended periods of time, even though his endurance was still pathetic, inadequate, he was _ready._

They forced him through the requisite discharge hurdles; several respiratory and cardiovascular tests and challenges, a wound check, a final blood panel, a fitness test that he would have managed with no particular notice in good health, and, of course, _paperwork._

He hadn’t completed _paperwork_ since his time with Kaslo Porting Freight Company. The bureaucracy had incensed him so deeply that, when the company retreated from the diminished returns of Aurelac mining, leaving hundreds _stranded_ , he’d kept every single piece of equipment – uniform, kit, boots, a _vehicle_ that wouldn’t last, all of it.

He imagined _this_ bureaucracy was worth it; he was escaping with his life.

Then, with a suddenness that seemed almost strange, it was time.

He could _leave._

Doctor Sanofi regarded him with the stern gaze of someone who disapproved but still gave him a warm small when they shook hands.

“Stay out of trouble. Please.” The man said and it was so painfully true to his character, to his completely unknowing of the Black, that Ezra smiled something genuine. The man was a very decent one.

“Oh, doc. I don’t make promises I can’t keep, I’m sure you know that. Way of the Black.” Ezra said it to be irritating; it was the source of most their small conflicts, Centralian v Fringe views.

The man looked as though he were trying _very_ hard not to roll his eyes.

“I don’t want to see you back here. Not in this capacity.” He replied with a strained smile. He turned to Cee, his expression growing into something positively _fond._

“And you, keep an eye on your uncle.”

Cee’s lip quirked as she gave him a small nod.

“I’ll try.” She said, giving her _uncle_ a short glance.

“And I’d be very happy to see _you_ again, should you ever need anything.” Sanofi gave them both a final glance, a final knowing look to Ezra that wasn’t at all unkind, and excused himself.

Filipa, who had politely stood aside for the exchange, graced them with a familiar, warm smile.

“Shall I walk you two to the shuttle?”

“That would be most kind and certainly welcome, Miss Filipa.” Ezra said, matching her pleasantness; she was easy to like.

They walked, the three of them, making small conversation. Cee had come alive as they got closer to the shuttle bay, as though she understood that the future – the one that had felt long darkened by uncertainty, by fear – was opening to her again.

Ezra couldn’t help but notice that when the light of outside hit, as the wind pushed at them, the humidity cloying, she smiled.

* * *

**An additional interlude.**

Filipa Baiana had had _many_ clients, many research subjects, many patients in her long career.

Too many to count and, with regret, too many to remember.

She knew, as she walked with them, that she would remember this pair. She knew that, despite her best attempts at creating good patient-practitioner boundaries, she was _sad_ to see them go. Genuinely so.

Saying goodbye to Cee was a bittersweet thing. She couldn’t claim that she completely understood Cee, but she’d come to like her, very much. They’d spent many small moments together, some in silence, some in brief conversation. All of it had been rewarding, enriching.

“This is my contact-chain, if you need it.” She didn’t usually hand out information like this, but she knew to where she was destined: the deep reaches of the Fringe, maybe the Green Moon.

She wanted her to understand that she would answer, should she need anything.

“Either of you.” She corrected herself, giving Ezra a glance.

She meant it.

“You’re a force, Cee.” Filipa said; it brought heat to the girl’s cheeks, her mouth quirked in a nervous, embarrassed thing. Filipa knew that, had Ezra said it – and she’d witnessed many of their small moments, ones that endeared a being – she would have rolled her eyes.

She spared her the need to respond and instead, stepped forward, gently reached for one of her hands in a very informal handshake, squeezed. 

“Take care of yourself. Each other.”

“Of course.” Cee said as she bit her lip; she wasn’t used to goodbyes, Filipa thought.

Cee gave her a final, small smile and looked at Ezra, as though sensing there was more to be said between the two adults.

“Go on, birdie. I’ll be right behind you.” Ezra said, his voice dropping fond.

Together they watched her enter the shuttle, just out of view.

Filipa turned her attention to Ezra.

She’d readily admit that he had made her nervous, in the beginning; that she hadn’t been able to fully divine the nature, the context of his presence in Cee’s life.

Now, though, she could comfortably say she was glad to have met him. He had rough edges, _very_ rough edges – Sanofi had complained about it, of course - but he was good with Cee. He was kind to her.

She knew, from her own research and her time with them, that on that Green Moon, the best Cee could have received in those dire straits was Ezra’s intervention, intentional or otherwise.

She knew the same to be true for Ezra, as well; probably _more so._

“Did I ever tell you that Cee told me you talk too much?” It seemed the kind of farewell he would appreciate.

“No, you failed to do so, though I can assure you, I am completely aware of her sentiments.” He wheezed a bit; she could hear it. The activity of the day had probably worn on him.

Regardless, it was an immense improvement, she knew.

She had been rather certain that he would die.

She was glad he hadn’t.

She checked to see if Cee was visible, if Cee was watching, before reaching into the carryall she’d concealed under her manteau, just in case Cee were playing at being particularly observant that morning.

“Here. As requested.”

She wished she could have observed this moment longer than it lasted; watching this man’s expression form into something so genuine was a satisfying change.

He looked pleased.

Happy.

“I thought perhaps you had forgotten.” Ezra admitted, smiling as he looked up at her and then back at the package. He took the paper-wrapped package, lifted it up and down, marveling at the weight.

“Kevva, is it a tome?”

“It’s a set. The sequel came out just months ago, apparently.” She’d been surprised, too, ecstatic.

His expression grew wider, reaching his eyes to produce the attractive lines of a face that smiled frequently.

He tucked it into the hospital duffel they’d given him, a gift from Sanofi that he’d simply handed the man, as though it were a souvenir.

“I am afraid I don’t have any decent means of repayment. None, at least, that are befitting of your generosity.” He said, even though he had been adamant that she use his Points. She hadn’t, but she doubted he would notice.

He really had come to surprise her, this one.

“It was my pleasure, Ezra.”

The departure tone buzzed through the shuttle bay.

Time to go.

With small, pleasant words of farewell, they parted ways.

Filipa would think about them for a long time.

* * *

Cee and Ezra arrived.

The shuttle deposited them, the landing kind and easy, and opened the door to what was next.

They had both stood, for a moment, at the bottom, trading a glance, before continuing on.

It didn’t take much effort to track down the Rock Hopper. The foreman in charge of the tarmac, the hanger, was eager to get rid of it.

“That hunk of junk?” He questioned, disbelief infecting his tone; it was made even more comical by his clear confusion over the odd pair before him, this gruff looking one-armed man, and this very serious looking child. “Didn’t know it could still fly.”

Cee looked at him, her expression clearly stating, _I told you_.

Initially, she’d been extremely unimpressed by his solution to the problem, even though she’d been the one to bring the rock jumper into the folds of their conversation.

It grew as the cycle wore on into careful anticipation.

He hoped this didn’t ruin that for her, didn’t jolt her too violently from that contented thing she settled into during all their planning.

“She’ll fly.” He’d said in some form of defiance; she _would_ fly.

Now, standing in front of it, Ezra could see where the other man had been coming from. He’d never seen it in the light of day.

Cee _had_ tried to warn him.

“I tried to warn you.” She said, her tone flat and unimpressed as she crossed her arms, took in the sight of the beaten thing before them.

“That you did.” He grimaced.

It had been stripped, thoroughly. He’d known that, but illuminated by planetary sunlight, the details really shone. He was impressed that it had, in fact, made it to the Towline freighter. For, not only had the mercenaries gutted it, stripped it down, they’d done so with little to no finesse.

That which had been removed had been subject to extrication by hot-torches and blade, not actual _tools._ Pieces had been _shorn_ off rather than removed. Gashes and pockmarks littered the hull; none so deep as to compromise flight integrity, but it spoke of a risky and, frankly, _stupid_ endeavor.

The hatch door was still open, the bottom of its small ramp scraped in a way that suggested it had been raked across the ground. It must have been hauled from the tarmac as it were after their landing.

The bracers were uneven, tilting the whole of it slightly to the left.

The parachute had been _cut_ rather than retracted.

 _Something_ was _leaking._

Cee had remember it, had seen it. She had described it _very_ accurately.

“Well, birdie. We got some work ahead.”

They stood in silence for another long moment.

Kevva, this ship was terrible.

It looked as bad as Cee’s pod had, as bad as his own ship had after all the unpleasantness of that day.

Ezra tilted his head, took a deep inhale that still, somehow, hurt.

“Now,” there _was_ a positive in all this, he knew, “at the very least we’ll be getting our gear back. You know, there’s something sentimental about a man’s prospecting gear, takes effort to wear it in just right, more than, it takes _time_ –“

“Ezra.” Cee interrupted, uninterested. Ezra couldn’t help but grin as she forged ahead, pack slung across her back.

Despite her words, she passed with a smile.

Ezra huffed.

For what must have been the dozenth time that cycle he wondered how he had come into the essential guardianship of this stray girl.

No matter.

He followed her inside and though he wasn’t at all surprised to find it looked just as terrible inside as it had out, he still felt slightly dejected. It would have been too grand a mercy for his memory of the place to have been false, tainted by how wretched-sick he had been.

He sought the electrics panel as Cee made a strong path towards the sleeping quarters. He tapped the appropriate button and, after a prolonged moment of ship wide light-flickering, the pop-explosion of a concealed spark, and the hum of warming, straining breakers, the ship was illuminated in a dim light.

Ezra could have wept; had he been a man given to weeping, he would have at the _sight_ of it.

Instead, he took careful inventory of their surroundings.

The electrics panel would be a thing of chance. He could tell by looking that it was a project, and recalled clearly just how many of the switches, knobs, buttons, had been dead ends. It would take time to catalogue which of their capacities they were missing.

The galley was half-gutted. He had remembered that, but it looked even more ramshackle in the light, with a clear head. He’d spent most his time in the galley trying _not_ to vomit, so it wasn’t as though he’d been fretting over the stripped carbonators, lack of coolant filings, the butchered water-reserve plumbing. He especially hadn’t care much about the way nearly all the panels and doors were half-hung or derailed; _that_ was aesthetic and _that_ he could ignore.

Nutrition packets littered the floor; still good, likely, but disregarded and forgotten in his cycles of decline.

Ezra stepped over the packets, crossed the space, and leaned into the confines of the command area. This he remembered with perfect clarity. He remembered spying the Towline freighter through the window, the way the too bright sunlight had made everything hurt. He remembered passing out during the slingback.

The seat he had most occupied was rust stained in random spots; blood, his. The panel was mostly intact. It would have been a foolish thing to have done anything to strip it, and it was clear the mercenaries had minded it with care in their scramble to lighten the load.

It was with some relief that he caught sight of their crumpled suits, wedged under the panel, and the helmets discarded to the left, stowed in netting.

He decided to take it for what it was: a decent spot of luck.

Then, back to more of the same disappointment.

The refresher was woefully inadequate. Again, he’d known that. They had been truly spoiled by the facilities in the medical center. He wasn’t a man of immense vice, but he’d readily admit that the opportunity to wash oneself with clean, heated water was an incredible pleasure.

That was one thing they needed, at least, hot water or no: a water reservoir. It would be a deep lacking in intelligence to venture into the Fringe without it.

He was developing a headache just thinking about it, the things he – they – needed to move forward from the absolute cluster they’d found themselves in.

It was quite incredible how little he had cared for the state of their trappings, the prospects of his own future, when he’d been actively _dying_.

“Alright, birdie -” The birdie in question had been silent. Not out of the norm for her, but he’d been fully expecting the full force of her wrath, had been expecting her to voice, with self-satisfaction, how correct she had been.

He made his way towards the sleeping quarters. The space felt infinitely smaller when you weren’t fevered and weak.

He coughed into his fist as he caught a bad spot of air, dust falling from the ventilation shaft, and he mentally cursed this new weakness.

Ezra cleared his throat.

“I’m afraid to ask, but I’d be remiss to lose the opportunity of your opinion -”Cee was laying on her back in the cot she had occupied during their travels, eyes locked on the ceiling. For a moment, Ezra didn’t know what to do. He was no expert in teenage moods, though he knew that wasn’t quite fair to Cee. It was something he would have to work on, assuming every little turn of her moods was related to her age; he knew better.

Just.

He wasn’t sure what he was seeing, what he was witnessing.

Ezra glanced at his own former cot; like the command chair it was speckled with the rust of human wounds. A lump of fabric sat on the floor just next to its boltings. He recognized it to be his shirt. It was in shreds, cut from him, he realized.

It had very nearly, very literally, been his death bed.

And, he had no recollection of it.

He’d told Cee to contact Tower, had felt the warmth of her refusal, closed his eyes and woken in the medical center.

Whatever had happened in those last pieces of that cycle were completely lost to him.

_Oh._

He hadn’t, _not once_ , thought that this would be a thing that would prove hard for her.

He had thought leaving the Medical Center would be the salve.

See.

She was a tough thing, full of sharp edges and blunt words. She was far older, via experience and trauma, than was fair. She was angry in the way a burn might be; acute and then slow to resolve, simmering for a long while before being forgotten under the line of a scar.

But, she was also tender and sensitive. She was quick to tear but slow to cry, though, it had been suggested to him that his poor health had been a thing of turmoil for her. She _tried_ , always tried as though there were no other option but to learn it – those things dealt by life - to persevere it.

She was _good._

His mistake was a large one.

They’d never _talked_ about it.

Not really.

They’d never discussed those last cycles. They’d never resolved _her_ part in it. He’d never opened the space for her to air her thoughts, her grievances, her fears – what _had_ she done in those terminal hours?

It hadn’t seemed a thing she would want to talk about, or, so he’d thought.

Ezra decided that silence was likely the best option here.

It was a rare thing, his preference towards silence. He’d rarely met a situation that couldn’t be met by words, that couldn’t be slayed by good and true dialogue, that couldn’t die soft under the reason of well-crafted sentences.

He sat at the edge of his cot – his, because, it would be again, despite the trauma it had soaked up – and waited.

They went on like that for a while, and though an observer may have lost interest, may have been unmoved by her stoic display, Ezra could see the thoughts whirling inside her.

Her throat bobbed in tight swallows. Her eyes grew glassy as her jaw worked itself into an anxious twitch.

She shook her head in a negative, gaze still locked with the inert, nothingness of the ceiling.

It was as though she were giving in to the grief that she’d been holding, the kind that she hadn’t wanted strangers to see, the kind that demanded the privacy of a known space.

“I thought you were going to die.” She said, even as her voice wavered a bit. It was nothing that suggested a torrent was coming, but it hurt him all the same.

A far off, errant thought broke through, for a moment: that it had been a very long time since any being had feared such a thing, his _dying._

“They wouldn’t tell me if you would or not.”

Now, it has been a long time since empathy stirred so deep in Ezra. He had trifles in his youth of the heart-pang of something deeply human, pained and loving, loud and inducing of divine self-awareness.

With time it transformed into the surface-emotions associated with cheap thrills: lust, excitement, vengeance.

More time and it all became a tool; exerted rather than _felt._ Truly, he had days where emotional numbness ran so deep, smothered by hunger for riches and other plain things, that he’d enter the fugue of self-knowing. Where he’d come to understand that it had been a long while since he’d felt something genuine, all while understanding, too, that he couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t even _care_ to _._

And then he’d met Cee, a mere child in the Green.

Over the cycles on the Green he had begun to feel fiercely protective of her. In the moments in which he could, by all means, abandon her, he had felt nothing but repulsion. Even when he’d entertained it, wondered over it, he’d always landed on disgust and then something akin to worry.

As the cycles stretched, landed them in the company of the mercenaries, he had settled on the idea that they were a pair; that he wouldn’t leave her behind, even if the offer came. He remembered the twist of anger, _fear_ , even, he’d felt when Inumon had laid her to the ground.

He’d pulled her to her feet, the motion more a need to ensure she was okay rather than a thing of helping.

When the metal began to fly he’d pushed her ahead, into the tree line. Huddled behind a tree, urgent whispers flying between them, he realized he wanted her to _make it._ Even _before_ he’d been stabbed – a surprising, breath arresting pain – he’d known he would willingly _die_ in her place, if it came to it.

All that evolved across many cycles spent in forced companionship upon the Rock Hopper.

Evolved into something frighteningly vulnerable.

It took time, but Ezra came to understand that he cared, _very much_ , for this kid. That he wanted to see her safe and looked after. That he wanted her to be less alone. Less lonely, if he could manage it, if he could do all this, whatever _this_ was, right.

“I thought as long as everything was ok, if you were ok, I’d feel … I’d be more –“

Ezra knew the feeling well. That empty thing that opened up after something terrible and traumatic. The thing that asked too much of you, asked for you to be relieved, or joyful, or content, because whatever haunted you was _over._

He’d experienced less of it, over time, into adulthood, into his years in the Black. But, on occasion that emptiness would open to him. It would crowd him when a turn of vengeance yielded an emotional null. It would expand, expectant and pregnant, when Aurelac was traded for points and any sense of accomplishment failed to form.

“Why am I so upset?” She asked as she finally looked at him.

Her lip quivered as she breathed in, tried to temper herself. Moisture managed its way from her watering eyes, tracing a clean line down the side of her face, acquiescent to the demands of gravity.

Every bit of it wore at him, broke down the tumbledown walls his own traumas had built. It hurt to look at. It was _heartrending._

He hadn’t thought he’d feel such a thing ever again.

“There doesn’t have to be a why, Birdie.”

She laughed something wet and she wiped at her eyes; it was a small break, a minor deluge.

“It’s just how it is in the Black?” She asked, and this time she wasn’t mocking him; it was something he had said, over and over.

Something she had taken to actual heart.

“Hmm-hmm. That’s right.”

“You feel it until you don’t. You … talk about it, what it’s made of. Get to know it.” Ezra hoped she understood what he was offering – _talk to me_ – and that, if she did, that he meant.

“Yeah.” She said it in a somewhat broken whisper.

“Listen, birdie, I was meaning to save this for our inaugural flight, but –“ He paused, hoped it was appropriate timing, even as he reached into the duffel he’d carried in with him.

“ – and I mean it as no adequate salve for your troubles –“ Cee looked at him, confused, as he handed her the brown package.

She accepted it but didn’t open it; instead her brow pinched in genuine unknowing. Her hand reached up to clear her eyes completely.

“ – but if you can’t talk to me, or I can’t offer the company you need, I hope this serves.”

She nodded, as if only to acknowledge that she had heard him and tore at the paper.

Something in Ezra’s chest fluttered; it had been a long while since he’d given someone something. It had never so happened that he’d given something to a child, a stubborn, difficult one at that.

When the package, the contents, were revealed she froze.

Ezra watched as her expression remained unchanged.

He wondered if he had told Filipa the wrong thing. _The Streamer Girl_ , right?

He was about to give in to the strange compulsion to explain himself, to tell her they could toss it if he’d made a misstep, if he had gotten the title wrong.

He was about to apologize over … he wasn’t even sure, when she, for the second time in their knowing of each other, reached forward, whip fast, to embrace him.

He huffed; it didn’t hurt but it _was_ a surprise.

She squeezed, buried her head into his chest.

“Thank you.” Cee said into the fabric of shirt; he could feel the book set digging into his back, she was holding it, _him_ , so tightly.

This time he had the strength to return it in full.

* * *

Ezra and Cee were done.

Ezra paid the foreman – Dro, it turned out - a small sum to allow them to stay with the ship while they stocked it, finished repairs, gave up on those they couldn’t afford.

They slept in the craft and, sometimes, under the stars on the tarmac.

They ate some of their stock, shared a meal or two with Dro as a thank you for the trouble.

They cursed when things didn’t work out quite right, when the snap of a breaker burned their fingers, when hot oils and liquids splashed their skin, when it rained and they were forced into the menial tasks of interior maintenance – hard for Ezra one-handed, foreign to Cee.

They scrambled for the medicine he’d been given when his lungs would kick up some sort of fuss, a thing they were both still learning to handle; a thing Ezra was still trying to confront.

They laughed when pieces just _fell_ off, despite it being secured in place by Ezra’s single-handed attempts.

They talked about _it_. The things that haunted her, hunted her.

They tilted their heads, taking in Cee’s paint job – a passion project inspired by a moment of stagnation, a multi-cycle wait for a hard to find part – accepting that the rock hopper would just _look like that_ and that the Black was very dark anyway.

They talked about plot points in _The Streamer Girl_ during nutrition breaks, when doing nothing at all.

It took sideral weeks, but they managed it.

The rock hopper was finally flight worthy. They had it towed to one of the small, square tarmacs and regarded; a final check.

“I do have to say, little bird, and I mean no cruelty or judgment,” Ezra paused; he coughed, but only because the maize-crop was in spore, “but painting really may not be your forté.”

“Shut up.” She smacked him as she took in the sight herself.

It looked halfway respectable.

“Stick to writing, please.” He continued, smiled as she laughed.

“You’re annoying.”

The birdsong was dying with encroaching Central night, the bug-chatter strengthening. It was pleasantly warm, the sky clear.

It was an excellent day for a launch.

“What do you think, birdie. You ready to see if this mare can gallop?” Ezra asked. Cee was nodding before he’d even finished the question.

They didn’t glance back at the tarmac, at the maize-fields, or the far-off skyline of Central, as they made their way up the ramp. They forged forward, intentional, confident, towards the cockpit.

They assumed their seats, the ones they’d taken up the very first time they’d boarded, back in the Green. Cee had – in another terminal moment of stasis, a long rainstorm – stitched something into her own seat. A small, deformed looking bird.

A writer, indeed.

“You do the honors, Cee.” Ezra said when it was clear that she was waiting for him to do it.

Ezra watched as she commanded, with ease, the launch sequence.

Cee gave him a final look, a beaming grin, and pushed the final button in the chain.

It lit red under her finger.

And then.

_And then._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll, deepest apologies for my delay. My hospital has been swamped; I have had three days off since my last update and I tried to catch every spare moment and save it for writing.
> 
> Your reviews are what kept me going. I swear it. If I have lost any of you to the attrition of time, I apologize. I am usually much faster. I am so sorry, I am a bastard woman®.
> 
> Shout out to you gorgeous folk who shared so much love during an absolute shite time.
> 
> Notes on Cee: our poor girl Cee has been through the ringer and I think she deserved some recognition in the narrative. I see her as a character with a lot of loneliness, a deep lacking in any form of love, and a hunger for relief of both of those pains. Speaking canonically, she doesn’t know anything about herself. She lost her father. She developed a friendship with this random dude that she came to care about. She was forced into some seriously uncomfortable and terrible situations. I think she deserves more than stoic strength; Cee is a very human character, a tragic one, and I think that would be hard to explore if she were unfeeling and was able to bear it all in silence. 
> 
> Notes on Ezra: Ezra is, no doubt, a good man who does some very bad things. I didn’t want to completely neuter this character; he is an admitted killer, he has the capacity for violence, and, as we are told, vengeance. He is manipulative, though mostly – or only, as shown in the film - through verbal coercion. He uses language not only to express very intentional meaning and opinion, but also to soothe all manner of beasts he encounters, to turn things in his tide, to avoid conflict. I love the bastard, but he is absolutely a scoundrel.
> 
> Ezra is also that patient that signs out Against Medical Advice with a BNP of ‘drowning’, Troponin I of ‘fucked’, and a BP of garbage over trash (G/T).
> 
> Notes on Points: what in tf is a point worth? What are the lower denominations of points? I looked up point symptoms and was left without any higher understanding. Though, you know who uses points? Club Med. Points and beads.
> 
> I decided the conversions myself because why not, I’ve already deeply abused this world. 1 Federal Central Point (FCP) = 10 000 USD /12 800 CAD/ 8 100 EUR. I was trying to imagine what a reasonable payment for the mercenary deal would be and 150k for two prospectors seemed … right? I don’t know, I don’t do backdoor dealings, save for allowing my patients to take home gloves, tape, and extra bandages. Fuck the man! 
> 
> That would mean Ezra was offering 20k for passage for himself and Cee on the Rock Jumper.
> 
> Seem right? Who cares.
> 
> Notes on things I didn’t do: it took all my restraint to not give Cee and Ezra sick ass shades and drinks with umbrellas in the observation deck scene. They deserve a real vacation.
> 
> Notes on future stories: And, yes, of course, I’ll be sending these two back to the Green. Of course. I’m a sadist. The next story will be out soon; I have two in the works. One about Ezra dealing with the ramifications of being one-armed, and another about Cee’s processing of her father’s death, and the comparisons she draws between her father and Ezra as male/father figures in her life. I also have a story request I’m finishing. All will be appropriately angsty, fluffy, hurt/comfort-y, plot-driven, and found family themed. 
> 
> You know how it goes.
> 
> Notes on completing this mess: Bless this mess, ya'll. I can finally close my Netflix tab. Grab the wine. Hide yo wives. This girl is free. Sorry if any of it was messy, if any of it was hot garbage. I am ready to drink because your girl wrote 200-pages of fan fiction instead of cleaning her house or doing her dishes. Your girl forgot how to write the verb 'see' in her nursing notes, and wrote 'Cee'. Your girl got melancholy about not being able to live in space. It's been years since I've written and this is what I produce. A story about space bastard and his goblin child (thanks, indigochocolate - Cee is, forever, a goblin and, your comment inspired her absolute creep behavior when she was watching Ezra sleep). 
> 
> Here’s a playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2dnMMxaTB6c3eMLxQAE9D4?si=r6cwokBGRTSyoEP_8sXMBg
> 
> Cheers and good night.
> 
> Finally. Real talk.
> 
> Thank you. Thank you a million times over. More than can be said. Thank you to everyone who took the time out of their valuable days, stole time - time to sleep, it sounds like, for many - to witness this story, to read it, to kudos, to review it.
> 
> You have made every moment such a wonderful experience. You gave me an immense gift on days where work felt too draining, where my writing felt failed. I will, in all honesty, consider the start of this year a good one, as I felt immensely warmed by ya'll's company.
> 
> I'll miss hearing from ya'll.
> 
> Thank you, and until next time.


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